Ever felt stuck when working with an individual, facilitating a group, or trying to get a project moving?

Like you were missing something?

Wishing that someone would turn the light on?

What if it was your own agenda that was keeping you in the dark?

What if you could use the light of your own awareness to re-orient and find the way?

What if you had a map?

Sometimes our intentions and our training can get in the way of seeing and responding to what is actually trying to happen.

We get attached to our own biases and mindset, professional and personal. We see what we expect to see. We create reality in the image of our own narratives.

And this isn’t always bad. But we can so easily get lost in a dark forest of our own making.

Instead, with phase awareness as your map, you can figure out where you are, stop fighting it, and use the framework to guide you through.

Arnold Mindell, the transpersonal psychologist who developed Processwork and Deep Democracy, mapped out four phases that our experience naturally goes through as individuals and in groups (2017)¹. He discovered them as phases of conflict, but since conflict is baked into our experience at all levels, I find they apply in general.

I’ve called these phases: Respect, Empowerment, Transformation and Joy.

The most important message of phase awareness is this:

Be where you are.

Don’t push and don’t worry.

Each phase naturally moves to the next if we accept where we are and allow it to deepen and complete itself.

Phase awareness is also about conflict done differently.

Now, I am as conflict avoidant as the next person.

The phases offer a bigger framework to hold and understand those moments of tension that can feel unbearable. The map gives you direction and can help you to relax. It can give you a way to approach conflict as a generative part of a bigger flow.

Awareness of these phases can help you facilitate more effectively because each phase needs a different approach. Moments when we feel stuck can be the start of a new chapter or even a different kind of story.

Don’t risk wasting energy, getting frustrated, or even giving up. We get stuck when we don’t realise where we are and instead get caught up fighting what is trying to happen. This is where the phase awareness framework can really help.

Phase awareness is not about the content or topic of what is happening, it is about noticing how it is happening, and the working with that phase of the process to get unstuck. Use phase awareness to make sure you know where you are and can facilitate what is trying to happen.

For example, imagine being at work with your team trying to brainstorm your marketing strategy but struggling and stuck for ideas. Your team is stressed and no ideas are flowing because there are two big external threats, a competitor is moving in on your clients, and the economy is not doing so well. Honestly, you can barely remember what your mission is.

Phase awareness would help you to notice that you and your team are in a conflict with the world (phase 2 empowerment). In this phase you need support to stand for yourselves in relationship to external forces. By focusing on what makes you different from your competitor, you can replace the fear of losing your clients with curiosity and empowerment. Ideas can start flowing again and you can feel grateful to your competition for helping connect you to who you really are and what you stand for.

I first learnt about Arnold Mindell’s phases in a seminar that he taught with Amy Mindell. I painted this watercolor image as I was listening. I was transfixed by how the phase framework made sense of my experiences. The painting helps remind me of the phase awareness flow.

I have used his phase awareness map for nearly ten years. I’ve used it to help facilitation students, therapists, climate activists and marketers. And I’ve used it to guide myself, my relationships, my organization and my projects through intense challenges in my role as a Executive Director of a nonprofit, including the pandemic, regulatory crisis, organizational conflict and burnout. I have applied it to create a new approach to climate action (more info on that below). I use it myself every single day.

The phase awareness map gives you a framework that can hold you in moments of struggle, of feeling lost or stuck, of wondering if you’re missing something.

It can help you find your way.

So what are the phases?

Arny described four phases, numbered 1 through 4, and I call them Respect, Empowerment, Transformation and Joy.

The phases are numbered and described in a circular flow as shown in the diagram because they build on each other sequentially. There is a developmental logic from one to the next that supports our most satisfying experience and best outcomes from each phase. However they are in a dynamic system and our experience will sometimes take shortcuts as we’ll see below.

Also keep in mind that the phases are not a linear, one-way journey. They are part of a dynamic system, and support us in the spiral path so commonly described in wisdom traditions. We move through the phases over and again, each time accessing more of the gifts, each time finding a deeper access to the learning of each of the phases and how each of these support us in our full, authentic being.

The phases and their transitions are not a prescription, they offer a map to help you navigate. So as you read through this phase mapping framework, invite yourself to relate it to your own experience. Remember, a map is only as good as its ability to help you find your way. You are invited to use the phases to orient you, to help you go deeper into your experience, and to give yourself a direction when you find yourself lost.

You will probably have an ‘oh yeah’ feeling as you read through the framework. These phases arise from our experience and should feel familiar. The phase map framework is an integration of experiences and patterns that we know from psychology, sociology, and history, as well as our own lives. It puts them into a framework to create a coherent sense of meaning and direction. This supports our understanding and can make our facilitation more effective.

Maybe you’ll discover new territory or a hidden area of the map. Please consider yourself a co-developer of the phase map, and use it to build our shared knowledge of this mysterious and awesome encounter with experience that we call life.

Phase 1: Respect

In what Arny calls Phase 1, our experience is about knowing ourselves. Who are you? Who are we? What is special, unique and beautiful about you or your group? What is your nature? What do you value? Who and what do you love? What are you here for? It is about being and about appreciating our being. Getting to know and connecting to our individual self. It is about healthy self regard, knowing our needs and respecting our unique nature.

Psychology can describe this phase as narcissistic. Healthy narcissism successfully moves through phase 1 and acquires self-esteem and self-regard, while getting stuck in phase 1 will mean unhealthy narcissistic personality issues, selfishness, inability to feel or care about your impact on others.

I call this phase, Respect, because it reminds me not to take it or myself for granted. Phase 1 builds the foundation on which we can grow. It provides the generosity to relate to the world with integrity and compassion.
while recognizing that our own personal self does not belong to us, it is given to us, it is a precious gift that needs our respect.

Practices and interventions that can help us in phase 1 include:
For Individuals – Free writing, being mirrored, being joined, sharing about ourselves, finding out who we are, loving and appreciating ourselves, feeling our powers and gifts, autobiography, self-portrait, lists of accomplishments. Selfies. Understanding our needs. Knowing our Yums. Naming and claiming why we are here. Claiming our Impact.
For Groups – Personal Check Ins, telling our stories of success, connecting to our values and our mission, seeing each other, reflection, appreciation. Branding, taglines, logos, portraits.

Negative experiences that can happen if we get stuck in phase 1 include: feelings of superiority, arrogance, insensitivity to the other, attitudes of supremacy, and in its worst extreme, malignant narcissism, sociopathy/psychopathy.

Phase 2: Empowerment

Phase 2 is the experience of conflict. Phase 2 involves encountering the other, encountering the world. It is the natural next step after Phase 1. Once we know that we exist, we become aware that we exist in relationship to others, that we exist in a context. The philosopher Heidegger called this the experience of ‘being-there’ Dasein. We know we have transitioned into this phase when we become aware of, interested in, or disturbed by, something outside of ourselves.

Phase 2 is about realizing that what we are is always in relationship to what we are not. It is respect for our one-sidedness, for the sacred duty of having a perspective. We realize that we are separate and we are embedded as part of a bigger whole. We find ourselves in relationship to others and the world. Phase 2 usually involves conflict. I discover that I am different and this creates a conflict with what I am not. What do we say No to?

I call this phase Empowerment. In this phase we can learn how to use our power in the world. We discover that we are not everything, that we are something specific and unique and this gives us the power to act. We have agency and the ability to make change because we are part of something bigger.

This might seem like an irony. We usually think when we realise we have limits, that we are small, finite and just a tiny part of the world, that we arrive at helplessness. How could we ever change anything? But it is this exactly the incredible (and painful) gift of finitude that gives us the opportunity and the possibility of making a difference. Only because you are separate, can you take an action to make change.

Working with Phase 2 is about Empowerment because it helps us to access our power to stand for something. It is about knowing our uniqueness more deeply by knowing how we are different from others and from our environment.

Healthy Empowerment means feeling our power to make change while being able to feel and relate to the other with respect. If we are lucky enough to be supported by the gifts of phase 1, when we really know and appreciate ourselves, then we are able to relate generously to what is different, to what is other.

But more commonly, we need phase 2 experiences to help us access the empowerment required to relate generously and respectfully to the other.

Practices and interventions that can help us in phase 2 include:
For Individuals – Identifying your viewpoint. Discovering your boundaries, Knowing our Yuks. Claiming your Impact – the change that you are here to make. Understanding your finite perspective, and finding out about what is outside and beyond you. Finding your No – using embodied practices to access your energy and power for a boundary and for change-making.
For Groups – Establishing your viewpoint. Clarifying what we stand for by identifying what we stand against. Telling your story and identifying the challenges and villains that we face. Mission and Vision.

Negative phase 2 experiences include Othering, xenophobia, blame, criticism, defensive behaviors, and even violence. Getting stuck in this phase can lead to fighting and power struggle for its own sake. Cycles of revenge can be a natural process of transitioning to phase 3, but without phase awareness, revenge cycles more commonly create very harmful escalation that increases stuckness in phase 2.

Phase 2 is the experience of conflict and the transition of phase 2 into phase 3 gives us the tools and resources for conflict resolution. Getting stuck in phase 2 can create a nasty short cut straight into Phase 4, because we are willing to fight to the death for our own side. (More on this later).

Phase 3: Transformation

Phase 3 is the experience of being something other than our ordinary self. Many of us experience it in our night time dreams or daytime fantasies, when we find or imagine ourselves as someone or something different. Perhaps we dream we can fly, or are more powerful than we are in regular life. We might dream that we are yelling and singing at the top of our voice in public, while in regular life we are generally shy, quiet and introverted. In nightmares and anxiety thoughts we might experience ourselves as vulnerable or trapped, even though everything is fine in ordinary life.

In a relationship conflict, we might find ourselves unexpectedly behaving like the person we are fighting with. For example, we are upset about the other person’s rigidity, aggression or controlling behaviors and suddenly notice (if we are lucky) that we are behaving in an aggressive and controlling way! I say, ‘if we are lucky’, because we very often do not notice ourselves when this happens – but we do see it in other people. Notice for example, how a person identifying as the victim in a situation, when telling their story, raises their voice, strengthens their posture, becomes perhaps even a little intimidating, dominating the space.

Phase 3 is the beginning of conflict resolution because it is the opening up of our experience beyond the identity constraints of phase 1 and 2.

Conflict has a natural but mostly unrecognized experience that Arnold Mindell identified as a ‘role shift’. A role shift happens when one role in a conflict finds themselves having and embodying the experience of the role that they oppose. Processworkers are intently tuned into noticing role shifts because they are the key to transformational conflict resolution.

For example, a role that focuses on inclusion and commitment to care for all people is typically in a fight with another role that it experiences as oppressive and marginalizing with a scary authoritarian power. Very commonly, the first role inadvertently finds itself becoming tryrannical and rigid in its rules about inclusion. Or for example, a role that identifies itself as standing for freedom and autonomy, typically finds itself in a fight with another role that it experiences as being threatening and oppressive through imposing universal, global standards, finds itself enacting draconian attacks on civil liberties and freedom of speech.

When you realise you have become the other, you are challenged to accept that you are more than just the role you identify with, and you get an insight into the other’s experience. This is the beginning of opening up to understanding the other as yourself and being able to de-escalate the conflict by finding a deeper common ground.

Practices and interventions that can help us in phase 3 include:
For Individuals – Curiosity, Growth Mindset, Processwork (unfolding the experiences hidden in dreams, body symptoms and disturbing relationships), Role play, Trauma releasing techniques, EMDR, Psychedelics.
For Groups – facilitated group process, ‘stepping into the other’s shoes’ exercises, relationship and trust building, role play, dramatic/artistic representation of the conflict to reveal the inner experience of each side, a bigger philosophical or spiritual framework that supports exploration of the other’s experience.

Negative Phase 3 experiences include losing yourself in the other, co-dependency, substance addictions, getting stuck in altered states of consciousness, unable to take your own side or find your own ground, relativism, loss of meaning, loss of purpose and direction.

Phase 4: Joy

Phase 4 is the experience of letting go, relaxation, surrender, release, dissolution, becoming one with everything, merging, ecstasy, orgasm, and ultimately dying.

I have called it Joy because this helps me with my fear of dying, my resistance to phase 4. Phase 4 is about letting go and it is form of dying. Our death is the ultimate phase 4 experience, and we naturally fear it. In a less dramatic way, phase 4 includes the everyday ego-death frustration of being unable to do something, which is a kind of death because it threatens our intention, our power, our sense of agency and control.

To work with the transition into this phase, I invite myself into surrender whenever I find myself having the frustrating experience of “But, I just can’t do it!”. Arnold Mindell would gleefully say, “Yes! Great! Wonderful! YOU can’t do it” and then with a sly wink, he would add, “You can’t do it, but It can.”

Without phase awareness, this transition can happen to us as a problematic and dangerous shortcut. An individual or a group can go from Phase 2 conflict straight into Phase 4 fighting to the death, most horrifyingly and painfully demonstrated in the example of a suicide bomber.

If a conflict becomes so entrenched and unable to transform into the fluidity and role shifts of Phase 3, then there is a very real danger of a short cut to Phase 4 – death, depression, hopelessness and despair. Mindell commented with regret that people need phase 4 so much that they are wiling to die to get there.

By actively using the phase awareness framework and inviting yourself and your groups into phase 4 experiences on a regular basis, you can build your muscles for de-escalating tensions and moving through one-sidedness.

Surrender is related to ecstasy as we see from the French when orgasm gets described as the Little Death, La Petite Mort. Joy reminds me that when I get scared of phase 4, I am also resisting release, relaxation and the pleasure of return. My sense of self gets scared at the prospect of letting go, but then I remember that letting go is also ecstatic. With surrender comes return to my deepest sense of home and oneness, and that is definitely worth dying for.

Phase 4 continues and builds on the phase 3 experience of becoming the other.
It is about releasing your identity altogether and allowing yourself to identify with the whole. This might be the essence of religion and spirituality, of connecting with the divine. And if this is language triggers resistance for you, as it often does for our modern secular selves, simply allow it to be relaxation. Phase 4 is the experience you have when you completely surrender to letting go.

The completion of Phase 4 naturally flows back into Phase 1. After completely letting go of yourself, your identity, your oneness, after merging into the everything … what naturally arises is a new phase of discovering yourself! We often experience how self-love emerges from a spiritual experience.

Practices and interventions that can help us in phase 4 include:
For Individuals – Relaxation, taking a bath, lying on warm sand at the beach, Yoga Nidra, Tapping, Singing, ecstatic dancing.
For Groups – Socializing, Chanting, Ecstatic Dance, Drumming, Celebration.

Negative Phase 4 experiences include suicide, depression, substance addictions, giving up, hopelessness, despair.

Phases are dynamic

One of the most beautiful and frustrating aspects of phase awareness is that as you examine your experience, it will change!, simply because life is always in motion. The phases are inherently in process, flowing into each other in a continuous movement. When this flow is naturally happening, we don’t notice anything or experience a problem. Which is why phase awareness is most helpful when you feel stuck. Being stuck in a phase is painful, we are born to move. Phase awareness is facilitative because it supports the dynamic flow which is naturally trying to happen.

The second aspect is that phases have a fractal structure: if you look closely into your experience within any particular one of the phases, you will find that it has the four phase structure within it!

For example, I find myself in a getting to know myself exploration (Phase 1), and in doing so I discover a significant conflict story in my past (Phase 2), and as I work with that conflict story, I discover that I am a bit like the troubling other at times, (Phase 3), finding my ability to transform into this other with choice and awareness gives me great flexibility and power, and this allows me to surrender into joy (Phase 4), with a feeling of respect, love and appreciation for my own unique nature (Phase 1).

Like a fractal, the phases of our experience retain their 4 phase structure at different scales. In other words, you can discover and work with the four phases within your experience of each phase!

Finally, remember that the developmental order is also dynamic. The phases are numbered because they naturally transition from one to the next if the previous phase is completed. But we can also observe and experience short cuts between phases outside of the numerical sequence. For example, it is not uncommon to move from phase 2 straight to phase 4, bypassing phase 3. Phase 3 is the least known phase of experience in our modern, scientific industrialized societies, and much of depth psychology including Arnold Mindell’s Processwork is a set of technologies for working with Phase 3. With awareness these shortcuts can be helpful, but without awareness, they can entrench some of our most negative experiences like hopelessness, burnout, selfishness, using force, pursuing revenge, or giving up.

How to use the Phase Awareness Framework

Phase awareness shines a light on common struggles and tricky moments, and offers a way of understanding and a direction when you feel stuck.

The phase map can help you navigate and make more sense of what you are experiencing. It can help you make better choices, and facilitate more effectively with less energy. Understanding the phases allows you to craft better interventions and avoid the frustration of fighting what is trying to happen.

Try these three steps to begin using the phase awareness framework.

Step One

First, get familiar with the phase framework as presented here and begin to track the phases in your own experience. Make a practice of trying to identify the phase you are experiencing in a given moment. Do this with a light touch, keeping in mind that your experience is fractal and dynamic … as you examine your experience, it will change! Simply allow yourself to practice sensing into your experience using the phase framework until you feel more confident and relaxed with the differences between them.

Step Two

Second, begin experimenting and tracking your interventions with each phase. Try the example interventions suggested here, and give yourself permission to discover and test new ones. When an intervention doesn’t work so well, notice if there is a phase mismatch. You will already have your own technologies and methodologies for working with each of the phases. You have been doing this since the day you were born! Notice, appreciate, recognize and refine your phase awareness toolkit.

Step Three

Third, try phase awareness practices in action with my free self-guided online Challenge: Climate Hero Your Way.

In this project, I’ve applied these phases to help people find their own unique way to show up for the climate crisis.

The Challenge includes a self-guided series of Invitations to explore in your own time, plus optional monthly live sessions to get support and connect with community. The practices are designed to support your experience of each of the phases and their transitions. Each Invitation offers you ideas and dynamic mindfulness practices that help you move systematically through the phases. It is designed to help you connect to your deepest self and define your own way of being a Hero for the Climate.

You are warmly invited to join the Challenge. I would love to see you there and provide support as you develop your phase awareness toolkit.

References

1. Arnold Mindell (2017) Conflict: Phases, Forums, and Solutions for our Dreams and body, relationships, organizations, governments, and planet. ↩︎