Agency can be understood as “the perceived ability to affect one’s own destiny and to engage meaningfully with others and reflects the dimensions of mastery and positive relationships with others” (Provencher & Keyes, 2013, p. 285).

a. Positive Agency

This involves having the strength of character to act in your own best interest, influence your circumstances in a way that is beneficial to you, and be motivated by positive stimuli.

b. Negative Agency

Becoming conscious of habits, judgments, interpretations, assumptions etc which can be considered negative, and making use of these to inspire change or strengthen resolve.

c. Trust

Themes in this sub-category are experiences of relational attachment, safety, and freedom, which may influence your ability to act in accordance with your wishes, needs, and plans, to envision, plan, or carry out short- or long-term goals, or to exercise your ability to choose.

This category centres around how you make use of positive or negative stimuli:

a. Positive Motivation

Making concrete use of positive stimuli as motivation to effect change, to experience benefit, and to move towards accomplishing a desired outcome.

b. Negative Motivation

Making concrete use of negative stimuli as motivation to avoid an undesired outcome.

Identifying things you have or have not done, which you judge to be negative or positive in some way, and which you generalize to mean that you are a good or bad person, or something you've been told – negative or positive – which you generalize to mean something negative or positive about yourself as a whole. Coping strategies related to these ideas of identity may be either fear- or shame-based on the one hand and idealized on the other. These are in contrast to helpful coping strategies, which “are characterized by rationality, flexibility, and foresight, including the ability to regulate emotions” (Langeland & Vinje, 2013, p. 302).

a. Self-Worth

This encompasses self-care, self-acceptance, authenticity, setting good boundaries, and experiences of empowerment, among others. Positive self-worth may also be experienced as opportunity and hope.

b. Self-Loathing

This encompasses low self-esteem, self-deprecation, and shame. Self-loathing in this context can be understood to mean negative self-worth and may be experienced as hopelessness.

This category illustrates stagnation issues. Ambivalence can be seen as avoidance behaviour, e.g. not acting on what you believe you want so as to avoid a perceived negative consequence. Liminality in this context refers to being in process, e.g., when a new experience hasn’t become a healthy habit yet. «Liminality marks a particular stage in the rituals of passage, the one in which the transition or change occurs. It is preceded by a stable condition, and it leads to the acquisition of a new position in the structured world” (Levine, S.K., 2010b, p. 44).

a. Ambivalence

This is the experience of wanting two opposing things, e.g. one you want to achieve, and one you want to avoid in equal measure, or between two seemingly equal opportunities, where it seems difficult or impossible to choose. Some motives for ambivalence are confusion regarding role definition and an external locus of control, i.e. being more focused on others' needs than on one's own (Galvin, Randel, Collins & Johnson, 2018, p. 820).

b. Liminality

During the liminal phase, there is a period of integration of the new (van Gennep in Levine, S.K., 2010b, p. 42), a maturation process. Liminality comprises a period of instability between old and new ways of being and acting which may not have taken hold yet.

This category has to do with your ability to orient yourself in your internal and external environment, and whether your locus of control, i.e., your perception of the cause of experiences in your life as being yourself or others (Galvin et al, 2018, p. 820), is internal or external. It encompasses self-insight, awareness and self-awareness, acceptance and self-acceptance, and a healthy ability to feel and express your emotions, among others.

a. Positive Reality Alignment

This involves becoming more aware of yourself and your own role in creating the life you desire, as well as your ability to take responsibility for and action towards achieving your goals.

b. Negative Reality Alignment

This encompasses unrealistic expectations or opinions of yourself or your life situation and becoming aware of them. This includes ideas about your life and goals, as well as unrealistically low opinions of your abilities. Becoming aware of these may afford you the opportunity to make adjustments to more realistic expectations and opinions of yourself.

This category involves your ability to apply positive, sensory-rich experience (PSRE) to your everyday life.

a. Symbols

Symbols can be used to support and anchor new insights and actions, e.g. behaviours you wish to change, positive things that already exist in your life, which you have overseen or ignored, your strengths, as well as sides of yourself and your life you've been ignoring or staying present to your senses and being mindful of your experiences.

b. Embodied Experience

In contrast to pure visualization exercises or ‘talk therapy,’ to name a few. Focus on here and-now experiences of creativity, spontaneity, vitality, freedom - fun!

c. Ending on an Upswing

What effect do you think leaving a session feeling uplifted or enthusiastic will have on you?