Developmental Line of SIS Training

Letting participants co-create their training gives them an opportunity “to participate in activities meaningful to their lives for which they assume responsibility and over which they have some control” (Benard, 1988, p. 9). It also gives them the clear message that they have the resources needed for change and that they are trusted to connect to and use their wisdom.

The experiential and interactive nature of SIS allows participants to learn from their experiences as they interact with others. They interact in both empowering and disempowering ways and experience their own feelings and physical reactions. They receive feedback from others on the effects of their communications and behaviors. They also experience their feelings as others behave in empowering and disempowering ways toward them. Discovering that one’s empowering behavior also empowers others, enhances motivation for positive change, self-efficacy, cognitive-behavioral coping skills and social support. Discovering that disempowering behaviors have seeds of strength, lessens shame, facilitates ownership of feelings, behaviors and the process of change (Englander-Golden, Gitchel, Henderson, Golden & Hardy, 2002; Wood, Englander-Golden, Golden & Pillai, 2007). The opportunity to experience, practice and reflect in the training allows participants to learn and assimilate their learnings and implement them in their lives.

Say It Straight experiential learning workbooks/journals for different age groups are used to reinforce experiential learning and making it a part of oneself.

The activities in SIS (such as sculpting empowering and disempowering communications, movies, rule transformations, moving from submission-dominance to relationships of equal value, etc.) facilitate a process of change that is described by the following steps:

1. Recognition of past behavior: “I have done this before.”
2. Awareness of present behavior: “I am doing it now.”
3. Awareness of anticipated behavior: “I am about to do it.”
4. Awareness of deepest wishes (longings) for positive behaviors.
5. Choosing behaviors congruent with one’s deepest wish, one’s voice of wisdom.
6. Implementing the new choices.

This experiential learning developmental line helps people move from feelings of guilt, fear, shame, anger, low self-esteem, as they become aware that they have betrayed their deepest self, to feelings of hopefulness, courage, competence, empathy, peace and high self-esteem as they recognize that they can honor their wisdom, that they can be powerful without being destructive and kind without being weak.