Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: You.
One of the things that's hardest to do is to forgive ourselves.
It's one thing to forgive our parents or grandparents for the mistakes they made, but it's really a challenge for many of us to forgive ourselves for making those very mistakes.
[00:00:24] Speaker B: You are listening to exploring Satir's legacy, the Virginia Satir podcast.
[00:00:29] Speaker C: I'm your host, Michael Argumanis Harden, and.
[00:00:32] Speaker B: Together we will embark on the journey of self discovery, empowerment, and meaningful connection.
Let's dive in.
[00:00:44] Speaker D: Our guest today is an internationally renowned trainer and leading authority of the Virginia Satir growth model. With a career spanning decades, Sandy Novak has touched the lives of countless individuals, therapists, and practitioners around the globe. Her passion for teaching and her commitment to spreading knowledge and wisdom has left an indelible mark on the world of family therapy and personal growth.
But what truly sets our guest apart is their deep connection to the work of Virginia Satir.
Our guest has not only embraced Satir's transformative approach, but has also dedicated her life to carrying forward Virginia Satir's legacy. In North America and throughout Asia, Sandy Novak has trained therapists, conducted workshops, and helped countless individuals discover the power of self awareness, authentic communication, and profound transformation. Today, we have the privilege of hearing about the wealth of experience, insights, and the invaluable lessons Sandy has learned along her journey. From her early interactions with Virginia Satir to her current role as an international trainer. Sandy Novak's story is one of dedication, passion, and unwavering commitment to making the world a better place.
[00:02:03] Speaker C: Welcome, Sandy Novak. I am so excited about having you on the podcast today.
[00:02:08] Speaker A: Thank you, Michael. I'm so happy to be here with you. I have just had the best time getting to know you over the last year and a half or so, and I'm just thrilled to have you on our team.
[00:02:24] Speaker C: I reflect back on our time in Ilearn and us just laughing together and just being together as a group. It was fantastic for me to get to know several of you and then work with you since then.
[00:02:37] Speaker A: Yeah, that was a great afternoon. I laughed about as hard as I ever have in my life for a long time, so I'm glad we all got to do that.
[00:02:49] Speaker C: That's right. Well, Sandy, to start us off, I would really love to just hear some of the stories. I mean, that's been one of the most enriching experiences of being with people who walked with Virginia Satir is some of the stories that they have and just the impact those events had on people.
Sandy, what I'd love to start off with is just hearing a story that was really just a live story that you had with Virginia satir that maybe had a huge impact on you.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: Oh, I'd love to tell that, michael. I went to a month long training, personal growth kind of training, in a mountain town in Colorado called Crested Butte back in 1987. And there were 90 participants, nine trainers, and Virginia in the room. And I was this shy school teacher, stay at home mom thinking about a new career, not super confident, and stepping my toes into the waters of psychotherapy, thinking that would be my next adventure in life. So I go to this training, and the first night, there's a dinner, and I'm a little late arriving, and I'm walking down the hallway to get my name tag and sign in. Who's standing there? No one else but Virginia satir.
And I thought, well, what is she doing handing out name tags that should have been handed off to Alackie? Why is Satir handing out these nametakes? And I'm ducking and I'm thinking. I'm listening to the voices in my head that say, I'm a nobody. I shouldn't be here greeted by satir. And I had the opposite experience.
She made me feel like I was somebody.
She greeted me. She offered me a hug. She made me feel like I was the most important person in the room. And I thought, this is amazing. I can't believe this human being who's in front of me.
Two days later, we had found triads to do some initial work in. We set our goals for the month. And in my family, the way I survived was I hid. I stayed invisible.
I made sure I always went last, because then I could figure out the rules of the game and how to win. And so I hid in the back corner.
But my triad that I set goals with stuck their hands up first and volunteered to share with the whole group what our goals for the month were. And I am dying inside. This is so against the grain for me. I would never do this. Go last, go last. And here we are. Go first, go first. So I was the second person to read my goals, and she just started rubbing her hands together, going, oh, I smell opportunity here.
My goal was. I still remember it. I want to have a better relationship in my life with women.
And all psychotherapists listening are going, well, we know where that comes from. And you're right, it does come from that relationship.
So she says, well, isn't that amazing that you have this goal to have a better relationship with women? And what I love about it is that you recognize that change is possible. You just don't yet know how.
And I looked at her and thought, well, that's amazing.
Yes, and that's absolutely true. So she says, well, we might as well just have a look at it right now and put this issue to rest once and for all. And I'm up in front of these hundred people. It's the second day of the workshop or the third day, and already she's doing therapy, she's doing her magic, her change work. So she says, look out over the group and see if you can identify some people with whom you've already had a positive experience.
And it just so happened that a friend of mine that drove to this training with me had a condo full of really fun, energetic women. And I had gone over there and we had laughed and laughed and we called ourselves the women who laugh too much. And we really had a great connection. So she says, point out those women that you've had a good connection with. I said, this one, this one, this one, four one, get up here. She says to those women. And now I'm just quaking inside thinking, what is she going to do? I have no idea. What have I gotten myself into? Could I crawl in the corner and hide? But the whole time she's holding my hand and her hand is moving and I feel like I'm in a polygraph. She can read whether I'm telling the truth or not. That was the sense I had. And she's reading me like a book. And so she says, ok, so here's your team now. You women come around behind and put your hand on Sandy's shoulder. And so I have these four warm, supportive hands on my shoulder and the team right behind me. And she says, now look around this room and tell me if there's anyone in the room with whom you haven't had a positive experience.
And I said to her, do you want me to tell you who?
And I would never in my own life share that kind of thing out loud. I would hide it because I was terrified. And she said, oh, yes, of course, but she's holding my hand. So now I have all the confidence in the world. The whole time she's right there, right there next to me, supporting me. And I said, well, yeah, my condo mates, the people they assign you to live with for a month.
She said, oh, yes, that's how it always starts. Every year we go through this. There's always the figuring out the condos and who gets what bedroom. Am I guessing right?
And they said, yes, fine, get them up here. And so now I have three women in front of me with whom it hasn't been so smooth. And she says, well, let's clear it up right now. Tell them what happened and tell them how you feel and tell them what you want. And in the course of six, eight minutes, my whole relationship with women was transformed. I did something with those condo women I had never done in my life to speak my truth and ask for what I needed and wanted.
And it opened the door to having rich, deep relationships with women.
So anyway, that's one of my favorite memories.
[00:11:05] Speaker C: Well, that is amazing.
And you're saying not only was that an impactful thing that day, it's had a lasting effect in six or eight minutes.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: Whatever it was, Michael, it had a lasting effect.
I have friendships with women that are 40 years old.
So cool, precious, precious relationships.
[00:11:32] Speaker C: Well, you got to be a part of some pretty wonderful things right there next to Virginia Satir, but also, you've been a part of some pretty fantastic things. Leading and training the Satir model all over the world. Can you talk a little bit about those experiences?
[00:11:50] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely.
I had the good fortune back in 1998 of going to Latvia with a colleague and friend named Gloria Taylor from Ontario, Canada. And we spent two weeks training.
Seniors in college were majoring in psychology in the mornings, and then social workers were out in the field working with human beings in the evenings. And we just had an amazing time.
People loved what we were doing. They loved the work.
[00:12:36] Speaker C: So your experiences, also in China, I know that you have been kind of amazed at how receptive they were, but I have been amazed at hearing some of your stories, because oftentimes we're kind of criticizing different modalities for not being very culturally sensitive. But when it comes to Satir's model, it seems like people from all different places in all different kind of backgrounds seem to be attracted to Satir's model and benefit from Satir's model.
[00:13:10] Speaker A: I have the amazing gift opportunity to spend twelve years coming and going training in China, working not only with the general public in personal growth workshops, but also working training counselors, therapists, and later social work professors. And one of the things I saw, and I think it's just absolutely true, is that she wasn't working on the surface where culture clashes happen.
Do you like pork? No, I am a vegetarian. Do you like classical music? No, I like rap, those kind of surface kinds of things.
The work works at a much deeper level of our humanness.
And she's describing the experience. She's helping people describe their own experience of being a human being and what goes on the inside that creates our behavior on the outside. And she gave a language and a voice to that inside and then that outside. And the things she was working with were universal. She said she went to 100 countries, and everywhere she went, she was warmly received because people saw that she was speaking to them deep inside.
[00:14:57] Speaker C: Yeah, she kind of made it simple as far as the way she thought through it.
I remember hearing a video of her talking, and she said, there's some things that we know about all humans. We all have belly buttons, right?
Just to simplify and say, there are some things that we are similar in that aren't arguable.
And she went there and was able to connect at that level.
[00:15:22] Speaker A: Yes.
And back in, say, 1985, at the evolution of psychotherapy conference, people said, oh, she's so effective because she's so charming. She has charisma. And her simplifying things and making them so clear became an excuse for people who felt competitive with her to diminish or critique her work as overly simplified, when in truth, she was such a consummate teacher. She wanted people to understand what she was doing and talking about, so she would put things in the most simple terms she could come up with, even though they were profound and deep.
So that part was misleading and misunderstood.
[00:16:19] Speaker C: As I've met different people in the Satir world, it seems like everybody gravitates to a different concept that they really are attracted to in Satir's model. Again, very deep. And when you hear those different people talk on the subject of those concepts, they can go so deep in trying to explain what Satir was trying to teach, like Steve Buckby being able to talk about the mandala and Jean McClendon. And she's talking about the self esteem maintenance toolkit. Is there a concept that you gravitate towards when it comes to Satir's model?
[00:17:01] Speaker A: I would say, and maybe it's the most complicated one, the family reconstruction.
And I say that because it's like a symphony where she took all the violins and all the violas and the cellos and all the woodwinds instruments and all the brass and all the drums and all the everything, and wove that all of the pieces and parts of her model into one scenario or one symphony. And she said she truly believed that every human being should have the opportunity to have a family reconstruction, and that we should all have one every three years so that we keep our evolution going, our personal growth going.
It's hard. It's not an easy thing to facilitate, you really have to be on top of your game.
But the power of its impact is profound.
[00:18:12] Speaker C: Well, Sandy, I would say that there's people, even that study, satir, that never hear about what a family reconstruction really is. So can you, for the audience, be able to just teach the listener what goes into a family reconstruction and why is it so powerful?
[00:18:31] Speaker A: Well, so when I think about it, one of the things I was just looking at today, Michael planning a workshop, were she had three assessment tools, three ways she got to know her client very quickly, and she could just go to the core of things like listening to me.
In that session, I described that six minute little scenario that helped her go right to the heart of things. Those are the iceberg, survival, coping, and family map. If she could get those three things with a client and then sit down, she would call the person a star instead of a client. But with that star, she could sit down with them then and say, what's your goal? How do you want it to be?
How would you like your life to be? And how would you like to live inside yourself?
Which is such a powerful question.
[00:19:38] Speaker C: It is.
[00:19:39] Speaker A: And then to have, like me in that scenario I described, to think you're going to help me get this goal achieved in the matter of minutes here in front of this group. I can't believe that. But there it was. She knew she had the mechanism to help somebody get those things. And what she would do then is listen to their iceberg, discover their survival, coping, and then draw their family map and sculpt that family and change what needed to be changed within the context of the family, because she knew that we all had this powerful imprint from our childhood, whether we knew it or not. As a human being, we all get imprinted with the system of the family, and if we're going to make powerful, fundamental changes, do it in the context of that imprint.
And so she would spend the time she had, whether it was 3 hours or three days, getting people up, sculpting that family, and helping the star rework their experience.
And she called it coming to peership with their parents to move from being a child in that family, in their own perception, to really experiencing themselves as an adult.
[00:21:20] Speaker C: As I understand it, if a woman came in, so the star came in, and she was talking about how she had a difficult relationship with her mother, and Virginia was working with her. What might she do as a part of the reconstruction to help her move through some of the experiences that she had as a mother daughter?
[00:21:45] Speaker A: You know, one of the amazing things that most people wouldn't think of Michael is she would immediately go to the family of origin of the mother, and she would say, let's get your grandmother up here. Let's get your grandfather. Who were your parents? Who was your mother's siblings, and what was going on in that family? How was your mother treated? What was her role? What was she expected to do and be?
What had happened to her that she then brought to her marriage and to her parenting of you that's still affecting you in this moment.
And so she would help the star see the reality. And most people have never begun to dream what it must have been like in the childhood of each of their parents.
[00:22:40] Speaker C: Right. It's really seeing the parent as a yes.
[00:22:44] Speaker A: Helping all of us see that. Our parents also had struggles. They also had wound, and they also have incredible resources and that we want to transform the things that don't help us, and we want to harvest the things that are powerful and useful and helpful and keep those in a treasure chest of our own. And then once the star had a chance to see where mom came from, she would give one possibility might be she would give the star a chance to talk to a role player who's representing the mother and speak what she needed to say to the mother and change what she needed to change and maybe speak appreciation to the mother for the first time.
[00:23:39] Speaker C: Yeah, that's pretty powerful.
The concept for me that is so helpful to think through is this idea of us speaking congruently. You talked a little bit about it as far as that first event, having to talk to people that you've had good experiences with and not so good experiences, and being able to speak to women congruently, speaking your own truth and your own need, but also in a family reconstruction, sometimes we just didn't have very good congruent communication with our parents or our family of origin. And that is such a different way of interacting that they get to do during a family reconstruction.
[00:24:20] Speaker A: Absolutely a chance. And maybe your parent has been dead for a long time, or maybe there's a grandparent who had a powerful impact on you. I remember one of my favorite reconstructions that I did in China. There was this lovely man, I'll call him San. And San, we started out sculpting his family, and he described going down the lane to grandma's house after school every day. And they lived in the countryside. Everyone was a peasant.
They were living on the edge of starvation. But grandma would hide in her little pie pantry. I think of it as a pie pantry from the 1940s. In this country. She would hide a treat for him, whether it was a ball of sticky rice or some little fruit or some little biscuit that was left over from a meal. And she tucked it away so that he knew every day that when he arrived at her house, he was going to get a treat.
Meanwhile, everybody's starving.
So we went to grandma's house as the first scene in his reconstruction, and the role player gives him the treat. And I said to him, as you eat that treat, what's happening inside?
And he said, for the first time in my life, I feel special in this family. I realized that I was special and that I mattered, and that somebody, maybe not my parents, but somebody in the greater system, loved the heck out of me.
And we took that through the whole reconstruction. She became the diamond in his heart.
He used to be able to speak his truth to every other member of the family, and it was so powerful, he didn't know.
So part of what reconstruction is doing is looking for the gems, the treasures, the gifts, and harvesting them and putting them deep inside so that we live from those places.
[00:26:56] Speaker C: That is a great example. I love hearing that, and I love the power that. And hopefully some of the listeners can even hear that and see how they could utilize something similar, even in a therapy room with just their clients.
[00:27:10] Speaker A: Absolutely. What's the gift you got from your grandfather? What's the gift you got from your aunt?
What quality in their character do you want to emulate? Maybe you've never owned it, but today you can go harvest it and make it your own. So, family reconstruction, she always said, was her ultimate process, bringing together all the disparate pieces of everything she was working to do.
[00:27:44] Speaker C: Well, I hope that as I continue training people in Satir's model, I get better and better at showing people what a family reconstruction is, because that's something that not enough people know about.
[00:27:59] Speaker A: I'm with you there, Michael. It would be so great if we have a really powerful and effective training in that therapy.
[00:28:06] Speaker C: Yeah.
Now, Sandy, you have been connected to Avanta and later in the name change, Satir Global, and you've been a leader in the Satir world.
One of the questions that I have for you is, now you've been a big part of the history, and you're even currently working on being a big part of what's going to be in the future. What excites you most about the future of Satir's model?
[00:28:35] Speaker A: Well, it's the whole global impact at this moment.
I'm so excited that there are training groups in Africa. There are training groups all over the Pacific rim. There are training groups in Europe and in the Middle East, Canada, the US, South America.
It has spread. And I just want to support that continued spreading of this work because I know how powerful it is and how Satiri used to say, if we can heal the family, we can heal the world.
And I absolutely believe that's true. So I want to support the continued spread.
[00:29:26] Speaker C: Well, I know it's encouraging for those of us who are newer to Satir global. It is so nice to have mentors like you walking alongside of us and helping us understand how we can be a part of training across the globe.
[00:29:41] Speaker A: It looks to me like there's going to be lots of opportunities.
[00:29:45] Speaker C: Let me ask this question. Satir's work often emphasize the importance of personal growth and self actualization, right? Very humanistic, similar to the idea of self actualization, but it's different because it seems like she had a focus on spirituality. How does Satir's model, in your opinion, how does Satir's model facilitate personal growth and transformation in clients? And how do you train therapists to capture the spirit of what Satir was teaching?
[00:30:19] Speaker A: Well, first of all, she emphasized that every therapist needs to do their own work, that we can only take people where we have gone. And a lot of people would argue with that, and that's okay. They can have their point of view. But she really believed that you need to free yourself and heal yourself from whatever is there that keeps you from being fully human, fully self loving. She had very clear goals for us, and to her were the measure of a free human being. Someone who had high self esteem, someone who can make choices in their life, they're not hamstrung by the rules and expectations of their family or their culture or whatever.
Somebody who's self responsible. She felt like therapists needed to do that work, and in so doing, in healing themselves, they would come to a place of self love. And there's a connection, a deep connection, I think, between self love and our spiritual self.
For many people, spirituality and love go hand in hand.
The capacity to love is also our capacity to be spiritual, that ultimately, she used to say, we're all a divine spark of life energy, life force, that for many of us, there's a basket over that light.
And what her process was, was in, again, her simple language, let's take the basket off the light and let that candle, that flame of who you are, let's let it shine.
So that's what she was all about.
And anything that could help that process happen.
That's what she intended, and that's what she facilitated. And to me, for her, that was spirituality, to own ourselves as basic miracles worthy of love. For many people, that's like saying, well, in the eyes of God, I'm good. I'm fundamentally good. Absolutely.
And she wanted people to live there, not just believe that, but to live from that.
[00:33:14] Speaker C: Yeah. And I've seen that in training therapists.
Part of the goal that I have in doing the training is helping them to have a perspective that they are of great value.
And it's through that it's really seeing them kind of like you described, as fully human on their own, and capable of loving and capable of receiving love. That's part of their spiritual journey. And seeing a person that way is important, so powerful.
[00:33:45] Speaker A: You know, Michael, it throws me right back to China. People have said, why did satir fit the chinese people so well?
And one of the things I've reflected on is, I think, the greatest hunger in China, and it may be the greatest hunger here. We just have so many ways of hiding it better.
But the people I met in China were starving to know that they were of value, not because of what they did or what they owned or what they accomplished, but just because they were. And when we would jump in in the beginning of a workshop and start sharing those kinds of beliefs with people, it was like pouring water on a parched desert, and people just soaked that up. The need to know that we matter, that we're good enough just the way we are, that we are equal in value to every other human being, or being, for that matter, on the planet, is one of the most fundamental human needs there is. And we teach that from the get go, and we demonstrate it. And I think that's the part that really grabbed the chinese people.
The workshops live it.
We don't give lip service. We operate from that place.
[00:35:22] Speaker C: They feel valuable in your presence.
[00:35:26] Speaker A: Yes. And the whole premise, and the whole way that the room is operated, the group is operated, is that everyone here is equal and valued.
[00:35:38] Speaker C: Sandy, as we wrap up today, one of the things that I would love to do is give you the opportunity to speak some wisdom to our listeners. What is a satir like piece of wisdom that you would like to give the listeners as we depart?
[00:35:54] Speaker A: The first thing that just flew in my mind, I probably could go on and on. If you open that can of worms, Michael, you might get a lot out of my mouth. One of the things that's hardest to do is to forgive ourselves.
It's one thing to forgive our parents or grandparents for the mistakes they made. But it's really a challenge for many of us to forgive ourselves for making those very mistakes.
And so to live in that place we were talking about, that spiritual place of self love and the ability to love others.
It takes learning how I can forgive me for being a human being and how I can forgive others for being just a human being.
[00:36:48] Speaker C: Sandy, thank you so much for coming to be a part of this podcast, for having this conversation, and for sharing your wisdom. Thank you so much.
[00:36:56] Speaker A: Thank you for having me, Michael. It's really been an honor and a pleasure.
[00:37:02] Speaker C: As we conclude this episode of the.
[00:37:04] Speaker B: Virginia Satir podcast, I want to leave you with a reminder that the journey of self discovery and transformation is ongoing.
Virginia Satir's wisdom continues to inspire us to nurture healthier relationships, foster open communication, and embrace personal growth. Remember, you hold the power to create positive change in your life and the lives of those around you. Well, that's it for today's episode.
[00:37:29] Speaker C: See you next week.
[00:37:30] Speaker B: Thanks for listening to the Virginia Satir podcast. Be sure to, like, subscribe and give.
[00:37:35] Speaker C: Us a review wherever you listen to.
[00:37:37] Speaker B: The podcast and share this with a friend. Also, for more information on Virginia Satir, you can go to satirglobal.com or liveconnectedtherapy.com. Until next time, be kind to yourself and to others, and remember, you are a miracle.
