About The Adult Chair®
The Adult Chair model has been an incredible part of my own journey, one I just happened to
stumble upon. The best way to define it is, “it’s everything I never had but always needed.”
This life-changing model breaks down what it means to be human and learn to own and accept
ALL parts of you, past and present. No part is “bad.”
The Adult Chair gives you the language and tools to relate to yourself
with more compassion and understanding.
The Adult Chair® is a manual for your life. It’s a tool that helps you feel empowered, confident, and equipped with a clear roadmap to your healthiest, most authentic self. Through The Adult Chair®, you will understand how your life experiences have shaped you, give a voice to the different parts of who you are, gain greater self-awareness, and respond to life in a healthy way.
The Adult Chair® helps you understand the three main parts that make up all of us: the Child, the Adolescent, and the Adult. These three “Chairs” represent each voice within you. It is from these perspectives, formed during the different phases of life, that we navigate life's challenges, our experiences, and our relationships.
When you understand which Chair you are in at any given moment, you will gain greater self-awareness, live in your healthy Adult more often, and become a more grounded, peaceful, and empowered human.
The Child Chair:
The Child Chair is what I often refer to as the precious core of who we were before the world shaped us. When seated in this Chair, you may notice more creativity, spontaneity, vulnerability, and connection to your TRUE emotions and needs. Between the ages of 0-6, we absorb messages and experiences from our surroundings without discernment of what is healthy or unhealthy. It is in this Chair that we build our first ‘roadmap” to navigate through life.
The Adolescent Chair:
The Adolescent Chair takes on the roadmap of the child around the age of 7. It is in this Chair that we learn to twist and contort ourselves into a person who will be safe and acceptable to others. We may avoid or shove down our emotions because we are “too much” or we may be encouraged to be “big” and noticeable in order to fit in. The Adolescent lives in story and assumption, and in this Chair, our defenses come out. We minimize, judge, avoid, people-please, fix, rage, become addicted…. anything to numb our true needs (Child Chair). The Adolescent doesn’t have time for true needs and emotions. They are too busy keeping us alive and moving.
The Adult Chair:
Around age 25 (when our prefrontal cortex/executive functioning comes into the picture), if we had healthy models and teaching, we slide seamlessly into our Adult Chair. It’s in the Adult Chair that we live in the driver’s seat of our lives, navigating struggles while staying in alignment with our truest and most authentic self. We live in consciousness and truth rather than story and assumption. We respond instead of react and stay grounded when triggered. When seated in the Adult Chair, we observe and witness the needs of the Child and the defenses of the Adolescent before making an informed decision, aligned with our highest self.