Cutting The Ties That Bind

Cutting the ties with certain people in our life is powerful and sometimes necessary work. It is not about simply cutting off a person, but about radically reimagining our relationship with them through releasing the patterns which have built up keeping us in an entangled relationship. I have recently encountered many sets of estranged parents and adult children. We are living in times of acute stress within family constellations. Pressures of many forms currently impact relations, and we no longer live in societies in which rites of passage help us with the changes inherent in all relationships as people grow and change. As a result many are floundering.

Phyllis Krystal formed the body of work entitled Cutting the Ties that Bind many decades ago. She recognised that relationships can grow over time into what often feels like an impenetrable mess of assumptions, expectations and projections. It can be tempting at certain point to ditch the whole thing and ‘move on’. The problem with this is that the entanglement and confusion rarely go away. It is all carried in the hearts and minds of the people involved even if they never set eyes on one another again.

Cutting the ties is about consciously and methodically engaging with our unconscious to create the conditions in which we can simply let go of all the illusions which held us trapped in an unhealthy way of relating. It does not require the other person to do anything or have any knowledge that we are doing this work. There is something metaphysical which happens when one person actively decides to make a shift. It is felt. There are countless examples from Phyllis and other practitioners of people doing this work and finding afterwards a deep change in the relationship, often in a completely unexpected way.

Cutting the ties is a process which takes a minimum of two weeks. It starts with a meeting in which you have the space to talk about the relationship and what it is you want to release. I then give you a period of time to make the mental preparation for the cutting of the ties. This involves visualisation, recording your dreams and journaling. It’s really important it’s done thoroughly. If you want another session with me during this time to talk about how your process is going, that’s welcome. Otherwise, the next step is the final meeting in which we go through the process of cutting the ties.