📺 Watch on YouTube and Spotify

“There are no good archetypes, there are no bad archetypes. All archetypes have 50% light and 50% shadow,” says holistic health practitioner Greg Schmaus, who returns to Mental Health in a Modern World for a deep dive into the four survival archetypes and the unconscious contracts that shape our healing journeys. Drawing on teachings from Caroline Myss, Sarah Peyton, and Richard Schwartz, Greg exposes how the child, victim, saboteur, and prostitute archetypes underpin not just our challenges but also our paths to reclaiming inner empowerment and agency.

This conversation explores how these primal patterns originate in childhood, the hidden agreements we make to secure safety, and how our light and shadow sides work together beneath the surface. Greg unpacks how these archetypes influence everything from trauma responses and chronic pain, to relationship dynamics and self-sabotage. He shares practical frameworks for identifying your own unconscious contracts—and guides listeners through a meditative exercise to “unblend and befriend” the parts of ourselves that hold us back, transforming internal enemies into allies for growth.

Listen in to Mental Health in a Modern World for a revelatory dialogue that challenges how we see our suffering, provides tools for practical self-inquiry, and invites you to a more empowered, integrated path toward healing.

5 Key Takeaways

Transform your healing journey by bringing awareness and agency to your foundational patterns—here’s how to start:

1. Identify which of the four survival archetypes (child, victim, saboteur, or prostitute) most influences your current patterns and reflect on its impact in your life.
2. Write out an unconscious contract you may hold with one archetype, detailing the agreement, behavior, benefit, and cost involved.
3. Practice the guided meditation to connect with the part of yourself carrying this contract, using curiosity and compassion to understand its fears and history 33:31.
4. Actively observe moments when you compromise your values, self-sabotage, or default to victimhood, and consciously choose a new response aligned with your empowered self.
5. Unblend and befriend your protective parts by expressing gratitude for their role, then reclaim more agency and sovereignty over your choices 43:12.

Start today: pick one archetype and take a small step toward compassionate self-awareness and transformation.

Memorable Quotes

"Archetypes are really the language of the psyche. Archetypes become the vehicles that we use to express ourselves and come to know ourselves in relationship to ourselves, others, and the world."

"The saboteur always shows up at moments of expansion, at thresholds or moments of change or transformation. The saboteur is very often trying to protect us from the most empowered version of us."

"You see the saboteur, the prostitute, or the victim are not an enemy. We see them as parts expressing this archetype, trying to protect us from some core wound, some trauma, or some experience from the past that they want to make sure never happens again."

Resources Mentioned

Sacred Contracts: Awakening Your Divine Potential by Caroline Myss - https://amzn.to/3VUzSPT

Your Resonant Self: Guided Meditations and Exercises to Engage Your Brain's Capacity for Healing by Sarah Peyton - https://amzn.to/3zK1g9V

Internal Family Systems Therapy by Richard C. Schwartz - https://amzn.to/4bZqUE3

Connect with Greg

Website - https://www.healing4d.com/

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/4d_healing/

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@gregschmaus

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/greg-schmaus-22929589/

🎙️🎙️🎙️

Podcast Production & Marketing by FullCast: https://fullcast.co

Discover the best podcast services in the world at The Podosphere: https://www.thepodosphere.com/

Mentioned in this episode:

Embark on The HTM Journey

MHMW - HTM

Embark on The HTM Journey

MHMW - HTM

Now, every archetype has light and shadow. There

are no good archetypes, there are no bad archetypes.

All archetypes have 50% light and 50%

shadow because consciousness is the balance of

complementary opposites, right? So within consciousness,

we always must have an equal balance of light and

shadow. And that exists within every archetype. To get

into the four survival archetypes, think about the four

survival archetypes. Almost like the four legs of a table

that uphold your sense of safety, security

and survival. In a world moving faster than our minds were

designed to handle, mental health is becoming one of the defining challenges of our

time. Welcome to Mental Health in a Modern World with holistic

health practitioner Greg Schmauss. After overcoming severe anxiety

and ocd, he. In his own life, Greg dedicated the past decade

to helping others heal through a fully integrated approach to mental health,

combining lifestyle coaching, psycho emotional healing,

mindfulness and archetypal work. Over the years, he's facilitated

thousands of sessions guiding people back to peace, clarity

and a deeper connection with themselves. Each week, Greg

shares powerful solo insights, conversations with leading voices in

holistic healing and immersive live coaching sessions that take you

inside the healing process itself. New episodes every Friday,

follow the show and start reclaiming sovereignty over your mind in a modern

world. Here's Greg. Welcome back to Mental Health in a

Modern World. So today we're going to take a deep dive into the four

survival archetypes and the unconscious contracts

that are very much at the root of our healing journey. So

these four survival archetypes were originally

discovered by Caroline Miss, who's been a teacher of mine, who I've studied

with for many years. And these four survival archetypes,

from her experience, from my experience working as a

holistic health practitioner for the last 10 plus years, these

survival archetypes are really at the root of the healing journey. No matter

what it is that we're healing from, these four

survival archetypes are really the, we could say

the foundational archetypes that we're all

moving through, discovering and healing to reclaim

our sense of empowerment, our sense of freedom, our

sense of sovereignty and agency within ourselves. And when

we're moving through the healing journey, these four

archetypes are very often the most common

roadblocks on the healing journey because these

archetypes carry a lot of investment in

our pain, in our suffering, in our illness,

and carry a lot of patterning that have a tendency

to create pain, illness or dis ease. Right? So that's

why these four survival archetypes that we'll get into are really

the foundation or root of the healing journey at large. Now,

the way this episode is going to be structured is it's going to be quite

experiential, quite practical. And I'm going to integrate

the teachings of three of my teachers. Number one,

we have Caroline Mrs. For survival archetypes.

Number two, we have Sarah Payton's unconscious contracts.

And what we're going to do after we explore. I'm kind of giving you a

little lay of the land first. After we explore the four survival

archetypes, then we're going to bring those archetypes

into the work of unconscious contracts. Because all

archetypes carry contracts within them and we have

contracts with our archetypes. So we're going to bring

Sarah Payton's unconscious contract work into the archetypes.

And then I'm going to guide you through a meditation based

on Richard Schwartz's work of parts work and

internal family systems to work with the parts of us

that are carrying these contracts and expressing these

archetypes. Right? So we're going to take the

beautiful work of these three magnificent teachers and

we're going to integrate them into one immersive experience.

And so we're going to start with exploring what an archetype

is, and then we're going to dive into the four survival archetypes.

So an archetype is a primal pattern. Archetypes are really

the language of the psyche. Archetypes become

the vehicles that we use to express

ourselves and come to know ourselves in

relationship to ourself others in the world, right? So

archetypes are the vehicles. They are the

modes of self expression. And they become almost

like the roles and identities that we take on

within this physical incarnation to come to know

ourselves. And all archetypes come together and

find one another through mutual agreement, through

resonance and through contracts. For example, a mother

and a child come together in an archetypal

agreement. A student and a teacher come together with

an archetypal contract. Even the hero and the villain

come together with some archetypal contract and some

agreement as to the roles that we're going to play

in relationship to one another. And so all

of these archetypes carry agreements and contracts,

and they become the vehicles that we relate to one another

through. They're how we come to know ourselves. Now,

every archetype has light and shadow. There

are no good archetypes, there are no bad archetypes.

All archetypes have 50% light and 50%

shadow because consciousness is the balance of

complementary opposites, right? So within consciousness

we always must have an equal balance of light and

shadow. And that exists within every archetype. And

so to get into the four survival archetypes, think

about the four survival archetypes, almost like the four

legs of a table that uphold your sense of

safety, security and survival.

Energetically speaking, the four

survival archetypes correlate with the root

chakra, right? So the root chakra that exists down in your

pelvis, your pelvic floor, resonates with the

issues of safety, security,

survival, tribal association, and

anything that relates to your sense of I, your

sense of survival, your sense of safety and

security and what you need to meet your basic needs,

right? So that's the root chakra, kind of like the first floor,

the foundation. And all of our survival archetypes live

on the first floor, so to speak. Now, these archetypes are

there to protect us, to keep us safe, to keep

us secure, to keep us alive. Not to thrive, but

to keep us alive, which is an important distinction, and to

protect us in this physical world and in this

physical incarnation. Now, these survival archetypes, like

we said, are not negative. 50% light and

50% shadow. And what we're doing is we're learning

how to bring these unconscious archetypes more into

our conscious awareness. Awareness. Now, each of these four survival

archetypes, we came to know them

usually in the first seven to 10 years of our life. So there's

usually a moment where we're first introduced to that

archetype, whether it's the child, the victim,

the saboteur, the prostitute. And we create a

contract or an agreement in that moment, the first time

we come into contact or express that archetype,

and we'll unpack that a little bit more. So like I just

said a moment ago, the four survival archetypes are the child,

the victim, the saboteur, and the prostitute. And we're

going to go through them one at a time and unpack them a little bit

further. The child archetype is the first one. And the

reason I like to go to the child first is because we were

all born a divine child, so we were one with

everything. But we're also totally helpless,

powerless and dependent on a mother,

father or primary caregiver for our own survival.

So as a. Initially, as a child, we can't feed ourselves,

we can't clothe ourselves, we can't bathe ourselves. We're

totally dependent on mom, dad or caregivers for

our own survival. So the first aspect of the

child archetype is dependency, right? So we are totally

dependent. And so the light side of the child

archetype is healthy dependency. Knowing when

to ask for help, knowing how to rely on others,

knowing how to receive and to ask for what you need.

The other expressions of the light aspect of the child

archetype is your innocence, your

playfulness, your curiosity, your beginner's

mind, your childlike nature. So a child

archetype, even well into adulthood, should stay

with you as that playful expression of you. So

healthy dependence, playfulness,

curiosity and beginner's mind. The shadow

aspect of the child's archetype is when we

stay dependent, we stay helpless, we stay powerless,

we continue to look for other people, whether it's our mother,

our father, a doctor, the government, to take care

of us, right? So we're outsourcing authority

and we're outsourcing responsibility to some

archetypal parent figure to take care of us and

to take responsibility for us, because we're not taking

responsibility for ourselves. Now, the other shadow

expression could also be not knowing how to

ask for help. So being overly independent

and being resistant to any level of healthy

dependency or interdependency. And so

the big question that we want to ask ourselves with the child

archetype is where do I find myself

in the balance and on the spectrum of healthy

dependence and self responsibility, Do I find

myself overly dependent, not taking responsibility

for myself, or do I find myself overly

responsible and I have a hard time with any dependency

or asking for help or receiving. So that's the

first thing I would invite you to explore is where do you

find yourself in the balance of healthy dependence and self

responsibility? So from the child archetype, we're now

going to go to the victim. So the victim

archetype represents our relationship with power

and our relationship with boundaries. So we're first

introduced to the victim archetype, the moments that we

feel victimized, the moments that we feel like something

has power over us. Whether we're being physically

abused, verbally attacked,

emotionally assaulted, someone's projecting onto

us, anytime there's a crossed boundary or something

has power over us, we're introduced to the

victim archetype for the first time. And so the light

side of the victim is we use our power

to exercise boundaries or to take action

when we experience victimization, right? So the light

side is we use our power, we express our power through

boundaries and taking action anytime we're

experienced victimization to create safety for

ourselves. That could be getting out of an abusive marriage,

creating a boundary with someone saying no to something.

It could be physically Pushing someone away if they're

physically getting too close and asking them to give you space

wasn't enough. So it's all about exercising

your power through boundaries when there's some sort of

victimization or assault. The shadow side of the

victim archetype is when we use our

powerlessness, so we use the victim role. So we

use powerlessness as a source of power or

control. So, for example, we might use the victim

archetype as a means of getting emotional needs,

methods. For example, when I was a child, I would use the victim

archetype by using pain to get more love,

empathy, or compassion from my parents, my father, who

was a doctor, or whoever the available

caregivers were, right? So the first shadow of the victim

is I use powerlessness. I use

victimhood, helplessness as a way of getting

emotional needs met, as a way of getting more attention,

as a way of getting more love, empathy, or compassion.

And so the victim archetype can use its own

victimhood as leverage to get emotional needs

met. In addition, the victim archetype

can use its victimhood as a source of

perceived entitlement and what I'm deserving

of because of my suffering. A lot of times the shadow

victim feels deserving of some reward or

feels entitled to some payout due to its own

suffering. And we see this a lot personally in our

lives. We see this a lot financially a lot of times,

and we see this a lot. This comes through a lot of religious

imprints. A lot of this very often comes through the

Abrahamic religions when you have a God of

reward and punishment, right? So the God of reward

and punishment in the Abrahamic religions very much

gives rise to the victim archetype, right? So that would be

the shadow expression of the victim, where we use our

powerlessness to meet emotional needs, to

attract a rescuer or a caretaker, or we use

our victimhood and our suffering as a source of

entitlement or leverage to feel deserving of some

reward. Now, the victim always resides within

what's called the victim triangle, which is the victim, the

villain or perpetrator and the rescuer. And now this

manifests in so many areas of our life. It's also called the

drama triangle. It's also called the Cartman triangle.

And so, for example, we might have a situation

where we have an abusive father who's the villain,

and the child sees mom as the victim, and the child tries

to go be mom's rescuer, where the father

is abusing the child. So the father's the villain, the child's

the victim. And mom tries to be the rescuer. Or we

might have a situation where, and this is not all shadow,

there's light expressions of this. For example, if

someone's house is on fire, we could say the fire is the

perpetrator, the victims are the people in the house, and the

firefighter is the rescuer. Or the know

someone is held hostage. So the people

holding someone hostage would be the perpetrators, the

hostages would be the victims, and the people.

You know, the Special forces, the Navy SEALs, the

military personnel, they would be the archetypal

rescuer. So you see, this can express itself in light and

shadow form. There's very obvious situations where

there is a victim, a villain, and a perpetrator. But then there's a lot

of unconscious ways in which this manifests. And

a lot of times it starts to manifest just within our own being,

where, let's say you have low back pain and you

start to perceive your pain as the villain and. Or your body

as the villain, and you start to see yourself as the victim.

And all of a sudden you start looking for the doctor or the pill

or the supplement or the cream or the injection or the surgery

to be your rescuer. Now, I'm not saying we don't ask for help and we

don't seek therapeutic support, but we want to pay attention

to the framing, the archetypal framing of

how we're in relationship with things. For example,

pain can be the villain or it can be the teacher.

You can be the victim of your pain, or you can be the student of

it, right? So archetypally you want to frame

how am I in relationship with this? It's not what it is or

what you're doing. It's how you're perceiving it and how you're

relating to it. And a lot of times, for example,

let's say we had a. A critical parent, and

so we had this villain or perpetrator who is the critic. And

now all of a sudden, we develop an inner critic.

So a lot of times we internalize the critical voice of a

parent and we develop what we call an inner critic.

And now that we have this inner critic, when it gets loud enough, we

feel bad about ourselves. So the inner critic is the

perpetrator. We start to feel like the defeated

victim. And now we might look for an addict

archetype, the addict, the addiction, the self

soothing to be our rescuer. So I might go and like, eat some

ice cream, or I might watch television or binge on something

or. Right, so you have the inner critic as the perpetrator,

you have the feeling of defeat or shame as the

victim, and then you have the self soothing addict as the

rescuer. So you see it's not just an external

victim triangle. The whole victim triangle can

exist just within yourself. Now, what's important to

acknowledge also is that almost every marketing

scheme in almost every industry is based on the

victim triangle. So whatever your pain point is that they

identify, that would be the villain, and you as the consumer

would be the victim of it. And whatever you're being sold would be the

rescuer. So you see how every marketing

scheme is actually based on the victim triangle. So

this awareness can begin to help you see where

and when it's showing up in your life and, and how you can be

in relationship with it with a little bit more

unblending, so to speak. And so the big thing with the victim

archetype is what is my relationship with power? What has

power over me? Where do I need to exercise power?

Where do I need to create boundaries? Where do I need to

reframe areas of my life so I don't feel victimized?

And where am I truly a victim sometimes where I need to take

action, set boundaries, or create changes? Right. So the

victim's all about your relationship with power. The

saboteur is where we'll go next on our journey. Together.

We're introduced to the saboteur, the first

time in which we feel as though we need to sabotage

ourselves for our own survival. Now

this could be I need to sabotage my truth, my voice,

my passion, my body, my interests.

Any area of our life are our empowerment,

our authenticity. Where do we need to

sabotage ourselves for our own survival?

Now, the saboteur is the archetype that

convinces us that we need to sabotage ourselves

in order to secure our safety and our

survival. For example, when I was a child, I

grew up in a family of very outspoken people,

very intense, sometimes aggressive personalities.

Jewish family, a lot of attorneys. Every dinner

table is like a courtroom. Every holiday dinner

is like a debate. And so sometimes things would

get quite heated, quite intense. And as a sensitive

child, my nervous system would sometimes get pretty

overwhelmed, especially being around nervous

systems that were, you could say, dysregulated. And

so what I learned to do was to sabotage my voice.

I would not speak, I would not share what was on my

mind. I would not express what my opinion was or

what my experience of truth was in that situation.

And so I would sabotage my voice for my own survival.

So for me, the saboteur says, you need to

sabotage your voice. And Suppress your truth,

not express how you really feel, what you believe

about a situation or what your needs are,

etc. In order to keep yourself safe from getting

attacked, from getting persecuted, from getting judged.

And so the saboteur was all there to preserve my

safety around turning off or shutting down my

voice. Now the saboteur always

shows up at moments of expansion, at

thresholds or moments of change or

transformation. And the reason is because the

saboteur is very often trying to

protect us from the most empowered

version of us. The saboteur likes to protect us

from change. The saboteur would rather keep us

in the coffin of our comfort zone or the

familiar hell rather than the unfamiliar heaven, so to

speak. So the saboteur always tries to

maintain and keep the status quo because

anything unfamiliar, any sort of change,

any transformation or growth, could be a threat to

our own security. So the saboteur always tries

to sabotage growth and

transformation to keep the status quo. The saboteur

says stepping into your power is not a good idea

because everything will change. The saboteur does not like change.

And so if I step into my power, what would change about my

relationships? What would change about my marriage? What would

change about my career, where I'm living? If

I start following my heart, who might I

disappoint? If I start listening to my soul,

who might get triggered? If I start following my

spiritual path rather than my parents religious

beliefs, will I be alienated from my tribe?

So you see how the saboteur is always calculating

what might happen if I step into my power.

And the saboteur will always try and sabotage the

expansion in order to secure what's

familiar, in order to secure your safety

and your security. And so the other piece of the

saboteur is what we call secondary gain. And this is

the ways that we benefit from pain. For example,

I used to work with a lot of chronic pain clients. You know, let's

say chronic low back pain. For example, let's say I have a

client that comes into me with chronic low back pain and they say, you

know, I really would like to get out of pain. And so I start asking

them about their life, I start asking them about their work,

about their relationships, about their childhood.

And what you find out is they really don't enjoy their career,

they have a terrible relationship with their boss, they're not

happy in their marriage, and they're getting paid medically.

So they're getting paid to take time away from the job that

they don't like the boss, that they're getting abused. By

and they're getting loving care, nurturing care,

someone to listen, someone to see them, even someone to place

therapeutic hands on them. So they're meeting emotional

needs that they're also not meeting in their marriage. So you

see the secondary gain of their low back pain is

so much greater than their desire for healing. And so there's

almost like with the saboteur, there's like this cost

benefit ratio that's being calculated all the time.

And we will continue to sabotage ourselves if we

see more secondary gain or benefit than we

do any sort of cost. Right? So once

we see more cost and benefit, we change. But as long as

the saboteur convinces us that there's more gain or benefit

in sabotaging or carrying pain, we'll continue

to do that. Right? So you see how the saboteur relates to our

deepest fear. What might change if I step into my

power, if I transform, if I evolve, and

what could potentially happen if I let go of my suffering

and their secondary gain in the pain that the

saboteur really convinces us to hold on to.

And so the big question with the saboteur is what am I afraid would happen?

What would change if I stepped into the most

empowered version of myself? And so now we're going to move to

the prostitute. The prostitute relates to our

relationship with self esteem, self worth

and our values. So the prostitute is the

archetype of compromise and inner

negotiation. The prostitute says, I will compromise

my values to guarantee security. This

could be physical security, this could be financial security,

this could be Social Security, this

could be emotional security. The prostitute says I

will compromise my values. I will sell myself and

my integrity in order to guarantee security.

For example, if I'm in relationship, the

prostitute might become a people pleaser. I'm going to

say what they want to hear. I'm going to do what they want me to

do in order to guarantee that they're happy with me, that

they're pleased with me, but at the expense of my own integrity, my

own self worth. So a people pleaser would be an

example of the prostitute. Another example would be,

let's say I really value nature and organic

food, but Monsanto gives me a $5 million offer

to work for them for a year. The shadow prostitute would

forego my values and take the security, the light

side. I would say, no, that's not in alignment with my values and

we stay in integrity. Another example would

be, let's say we value nature, let's say

we value the health of animals, let's say we're an animal

lover. But when we go to the grocery store, we keep buying

factory farmed meat to save a few bucks.

That's an example of the prostitute where we're stepping out of

integrity, of our values, and we're making a

choice or a decision or spending money in ways that

offers us a little bit of security. Right. So you see how a lot

of the prostitute is. I forego my values to secure

my safety and my basic survival needs.

Now, there's a time and place to do that, but obviously we

have to bring the unconscious prostitute into the

conscious awareness to see if these are actually necessary

or if these are unconscious patterns that we can begin to shift

with our own light of awareness. Another

example of the prostitute that I remember as a child is I remember

my parents would give me some money to go to the movies with friends.

And what I would do, they would expect change when I got home, but I

would buy my friends movie tickets and I'd come home with no change, and I'd

make up some story as to why. And at the time I was like, oh,

I'm being a nice friend, I'm being cool, I'm being generous, but what

was I really doing? I was buying their loyalty. And since the

prostitute relates to self worth, self esteem and value, I

didn't have the self worth and self esteem at the time that they

would want to be friends with me, just for me. So I bought myself an

insurance policy. Well, if I buy their movie tickets though,

there's a better chance I'll kind of guarantee that they'll want to hang out with

me again. So that was, by the time I was 12 years old, a perfect

example of the prostitute. Now, lastly, the prostitute is the

archetype that overrides our intuition, right? So we

have an intuition that says to go be an artist, to go be a

healer, to go do this or travel there. And the

prostitute overrides it, especially if the intuition

goes against our sense of security. So the prostitute

is kind of like the archetypal gatekeeper of our intuition.

And healing the prostitute is what gives us access to our intuitive

self. And so the big question with the prostitute is, where am I

compromising my values in order to guarantee some

outcome, whether it's in my personal life, financially,

professionally, spiritually, emotionally.

And so that's a beautiful question to ask yourself to start

becoming more conscious of the prostitute. So we have our four

survival archetypes. And what we're gonna do now is we're gonna go into

unconscious contracts. So unconscious contracts

are simply the agreements that we make with ourselves and others, in this

case, with these archetypes to

essentially based on the survival archetypes, to

guarantee and secure our sense of safety and

survival. So our unconscious contracts with these

archetypes have four core ingredients. There's an

agreement, there's a behavior, there's a

benefit, and there's a cost. Right? So an unconscious

contract might sound like, I, Greg, solemnly swear to my essential

self. There's the agreement that I will sabotage my

voice and not speak my truth. There's the behavior in

order to secure my safety and not get attacked by others. There is

the benefit, no matter the cost to myself. There's the cost. You

see, there's four ingredients or four steps

to identifying a contract. I, Greg, solemnly

swear to my essential self that I will play the victim

and hold on to my pain or complain

about my pain in order to get more love and attention

from my parents, no matter the cost to myself. Or I,

Greg, solemnly swear to my essential self that I will

buy my friends movie tickets in order to

secure their loyalty as a friend, no

matter the cost to myself, my parents, or my

friendship. Right? So you see how there's unconscious

contracts within all of our expressions. I,

Greg, solemnly swear to my essential self that I will say what I think others

want to hear instead of what I truly mean in order

to guarantee that they're pleased with me, happy with me, and not

disappointed or triggered, no matter the cost to myself, them, or

the relationship, it would be the prostitute. And so you can see

how within these archetypes, we have these contracts which has

an agreement, behavior, a benefit, and a

cost. So what I would invite you to do is to take

one of these archetypes, one of these four survival archetypes,

and write out an unconscious contract that you might

have with the archetype. And once you do that, then I'll take you through

a meditation, a practice to begin to work with the part

that's carrying that contract or expressing that archetype.

So just take a moment to do that, and then we'll dive into a practice

together. Okay, so now that you have the contract written

or stated, what I would invite you to do is just find a nice

quiet space. Begin by closing your eyes, just going

inside, attuning inward, and just beginning to get curious

about this part. We're going to call it a part that carries

this contract and that expresses this archetype,

whether it's the child, the victim, the saboteur, or the

prostitute, and just begin to get curious where this

part carrying this contract and expressing this

archetype where this part resides, somewhere around your

body, just begin to feel into it, get curious

about it. Where does this part live? Somewhere around my body.

And once you find it, just beginning to focus your attention

on it. And as you focus your attention on this part, seeing what you

notice about it, noticing if this part feels heavy or

light, big or small, tense or

relaxed, noticing how close or far

you feel from it. And anything else that you notice about

this part initially. And now asking this part if there's

anything it wants you to know about itself, the

role that it's playing or what it's trying to do,

Just relax and without trying to think about it, just allow

yourself to stay open and receive a response.

What does this part want you to know about itself, the role

that it's playing, or what it's trying to do for you?

You can ask this part when it took on this role, why it

felt like it needed to take on this role, what were the

circumstances which might also give you an approximate

age of this part. A lot of times these parts are quite

young, sometimes even single digits. And

beginning to notice how you feel towards this part.

For example, do you feel loving,

compassionate and curious about it? Or

notice if you feel any judgment or

negative orientation towards it? So notice how do you feel

towards this part? And if it's anything other than love,

compassion, curiosity, what we would call self

energy, just inviting those other parts to open up

space, to separate out from you, just so you can really

be with this part from a compassionate place,

from a heart centered space. And as you begin to

approach this part for more of that heart centered space,

asking it what its fear is, what is it afraid would happen if it didn't

play this role, if it didn't have this contract or express

this behavior, what is its fear, what would happen,

what would happen if it no longer did this anymore?

And assuming that this part is much younger than you,

possibly even single digits, ask this

part this interesting question, how old do you think I am?

And don't think about it, just relax and see what it naturally

responds, how old do you think I am? A lot of times these

parts believe that we're still around the same age as them,

or think that we're much younger and underdeveloped

than where we are currently in our life. And if that is the

case, ask the part to separate out from you a little

bit so it can really see you as you are.

Let it know your age, can really see that you've

grown, you're matured, that you have a lot more self

agency than you did back then when it took

on this role. Notice how the part reacts to that. And

then ask the part what it might need, what it might need from

you in order to begin to let go of this extreme

role, in order to let go of this contract,

or expressing this archetype in this way. What would it need

from you in order to be able to release this burden.

And then I'd invite you to offer this part some gratitude

for the role that it's played for you, which, as you can see, has

been a protective role. So this part is not bad.

Even if it's a saboteur or a victim, it's not bad.

It's played quite a protective role, trying to keep you

away from some core wounds to help prevent the past

from happening again. So offering it some acknowledgement and

gratitude for what it's tried so hard to do. And see

if this part would be willing to open up more space inside of you,

to give you a little bit more agency and see if it's

willing to do that. We're not trying to change it too quickly, but just opening

up a little space, especially now that it can see

that you're a different age, a different size,

different stage of life, different

maturation, and just thanking it for giving you a little bit of

that space. And once it's done so just

giving thanks to it, letting it know that you'll follow up.

And then whenever you're ready, just beginning to bring yourself

back and opening up the eyes. So this is a

beautiful practice to what we call unblend and

befriend some of these parts that carry these

contracts and express these archetypes.

So unblending means to separate yourself from the part

so we can develop what's called a self to part relationship.

And once we've done that, then we can befriend it, which means we see

the benevolence of it. We don't see the saboteur, the

prostitute, or the victim as an enemy. We see it as a part

expressing this archetype, trying to protect you from

some core wound, some trauma, or some experience from the past

that it wants to make sure never happens again. So what you

really want to do is unblend and befriend these parts so

they're not an internal enemy. You see them in their

innocence, you see them in their benevolence, and you see their good intentions.

And once we do that, we can begin to open up more space inside of

us, and those parts can Begin to trust us

and we can begin to take back more agency and

more sovereignty in our being. And so I hope you enjoyed

this journey today. It was really beautiful where we laid out the

four survival archetypes, we identified our unconscious

contracts and then we went through the practice to really

work with that part practically and internally. So you

now have a relationship with the part that is carrying the contract

and expressing the archetype. Now, if you'd like to do some

deeper work and you'd like to follow up, I'm really excited to share with

you that on Tuesday, July 21st at

7pm Eastern Time, I'm going to be teaching a

live online workshop, a 90 minute workshop online

titled the Saboteur Within Healing the Patterns that Hold

Us back. And this 90 minute workshop we're

going to take a deep dive into the saboteur, which in the

coaching world and therapy world and self help worlds and personal

development, this is really the archetype that a lot of people focus

on. And a lot of times it's not really

attended to properly. A lot of times there's ways

in which we approach our patterns of self sabotage that can

kind of inflame things a little bit too much. They can kind of

feed more of like the inner critic, create more shame. And a lot

of times we find ourselves in these cycles of reoccurring

sabotage and sometimes we create habit change

and we do better for a week and then we find ourselves back at square

one come, you know, week two. And so working with the

Saboteur is really nuanced and that's why I really wanted to

offer a deeper dive workshop and webinar. So I'm going to take

you through a lot of deep work with contracts with parts, work

with exploring the Saboteur and we're going to dive

into some of the nuances of how to work with different

expressions of it, where it comes from and how we can really

heal and transform some of these self limiting patterns. So I'd

love to see you there. I'd love to take a deeper dive. I'd love to

connect more personally. I feel like this is already a personal

experience with us going through some of this work together. But I'd love to take

it even deeper on this workshop. So Tuesday,

July 21, 7pm Eastern Time. The

Saboteur Within Healing the Patterns that Hold Us Back. There'll be a link in the

show notes, be sure to register, reserve your spot.

And if you have a scheduling conflict, you can still register. You'll get

a recording within 24 hours. So even if you have a scheduling

conflict, you can still tune into the workshop

and gain all the benefits by getting a recording the following day.

So I look forward to seeing you there and sharing more with you in a

future episode. Bye Bye.