Creative Couples Awareness Workshop
The Creative Couples Awareness Workshop is a one-off, two-hour experience designed to help couples develop greater self-awareness and a deeper understanding of the patterns they each bring into their relationship.
The workshop is inspired by the principles of Internal Family Systems (IFS) and the understanding that we all have different “parts” within us. Some of these parts developed as ways of protecting us — perhaps by withdrawing, pleasing, controlling, criticising, becoming defensive, avoiding conflict, overthinking or shutting down. These protective parts can be enormously valuable, but when they automatically take over, they can also interfere with closeness and connection.
Using the metaphor of a vehicle, each person is invited to imagine their authentic Self as the driver, while the different protective parts of their personality become the “passengers.” Through a playful, hands-on creative exercise using a wide range of arts and crafts materials, each partner physically creates their own vehicle and begins to identify and give a name to the passengers travelling with them.
The creative process makes something that can feel abstract surprisingly visible and tangible. Instead of simply saying, “This is how I behave,” we can begin to recognise, “This is a part of me that appears when I feel threatened, hurt or vulnerable.”
Partners then have the opportunity to share their vehicles with one another and explore which passengers may be having the greatest impact on their relationship. For couples who feel ready, there is also an invitation to gently hear which of their “passengers” their partner experiences most strongly.
The purpose is not to judge, diagnose or get rid of our protective parts. It is to become curious about them, understand what they are trying to protect, and develop enough awareness that they do not automatically take over the steering wheel.
The workshop creates an opportunity to move from reaction to awareness, from blame to curiosity, and from “What is wrong with you?” to “What is happening inside each of us?”
At its heart is a simple principle:
When we can recognise who is sitting in our vehicle, we have a much better chance of choosing who gets to drive.
