Welcome to The Happy Medium Approach, where we understand the complexity of human-to-human interaction in our ever-changing world. Whether you identify as Neuodivergent or Neurotypical, we recognize the challenges we face as we navigate different contexts and the various controls that shape our behavior.
Our transdiagnostic approach delves into the complexities of human-human interaction within different contexts, offering simple yet profound frameworks. We help adults and children explore age-old questions in pursuit of authentic living and connected interpersonal relationships.
- Who are you?
- What repertoires of behavior authentically define you, align with your interconnected relationship, and the context you engage?
- How can others provide the support you need to navigate and thrive within diverse contexts?
- How can you construct a robust repertoire of authentic and social behaviors that work under ever-changing context?
- Who do you genuinely aspire to be, and which groups do you want to belong to?
- How can you modify the expectations and demands of each context to show up as the best version of your resourced self?
- And how do you communicate your availability and need for support when contextual variables may require you to be a whole self or just a fragment?
At The Happy Medium Approach, we embrace a paradigm shift that recognizes no human is broken. Instead, we believe that each individual is continually developing and refining their repertoire of authentic and social behaviors, cultivating broad repertoires of generalized workability across ever-changing contexts. Individuals are not a puzzle to be fixed, but a unique human on a journey of growth and self-discovery.
We also focus on building bridges between lived experiences. Each person carries a unique history shaped by their interconnectedness with their environment and their behavioral repertoires. Happy Medium Language provides a framework that harnesses the transformative power of language. Through this framework, we enable individuals to flexibly traverse the bridge of communication, fostering connection, empathy, and shared control. By understanding one another's learning history, we can bridge the gaps and create unity amidst diversity.
Cultivating psychological flexibility is crucial in our ever-changing world. We empower individuals to actively construct new repertoires of behavior that promote both personal and social well-being. If the individual's repertoire feels narrow, rigid, or unworkable, we offer guidance and resource supports to facilitate growth. Through planned contact with individual joy and a structured way out of aversive and coercive conditions, individuals can embrace the journey towards psychological flexibility. Noticing and willingness become the foundation for growth, while workability (movement towards your unique meaning) determines the steps individuals take towards a fulfilled life.
At The Happy Medium Approach, we're here to support individuals on their unique journey.
- We see you!
- We value you!
- We believe in your potential for growth and self-discovery.
Together, let's navigate the complexities of human interaction and cultivate a life filled with meaning and authentic connections. Welcome to The Happy Medium Approach, where union and understanding reign amidst the beautiful diversity of human experience.
Example Repertoires to Construct and Resources to Build
- Choice
- Communication
- Self Determination
- Engagement
- Noticing
- Emotions
- Self
- Social
- Safety
- Solitude
- Tolerance
- Masking
- Collaboration
- Flexibility
- Shifting
- Self Monitoring
- Perspective Taking
- Helpful Rules
- Comfort
- Intimacy
- Power
- Interconnectedness
The DNA-V Model of Psychological Flexibility
Copyright © 2022 – DNA-V International
At The Happy Medium Approach, we understand that life can be challenging and that it's not always easy to find workability and meaning amidst the difficulties. But we believe in the incredible resilience and potential of every human being.
Through our lens of psychological flexibility, we recognize that even in the face of adversity, you have the capacity to navigate through the challenges and create a life filled with purpose and fulfillment.
Our approach incorporates the DNA-V model, which helps bring coherence to the various repertoires of behaviors that you seek to develop. By developing coherence and understanding your own perspectives, you'll be able to move across the perspective bridge. This bridge connects you to the resource supports that are essential in helping you discover and cultivate your unique workability from a self, social and contextual view.
Discoverer
Discoverer involves broadening and building your skills, resources, and social connections. You leave your comfort zone. You learn through trial and error.
Noticer
Noticer involves using senses and body awareness to experience the world and detect value in the moment. It also involves emotional intelligence. This is the skill of using emotions as information and responding to emotions effectively rather than impulsively reacting to them.
Advisor
Advisor is your inner voice - judging, evaluating, and guiding you to stay safe and act efficiently. It helps you avoid unnecessary trial and error learning.
Self-view
Self-view helps you break free from self-limiting beliefs. You are not defined by your past behavior (D), feelings (N), or thoughts (A). You are capable of growing, improving, and creating a life in value. You are more than you know.
Valuer Everything in DNA-V is in the service of value. The valuer assesses the extent to which behavior is meaningful, fun, and personally important. The valuer often asks, "what kind of person do I want to be right now?"
Social-view
Social-view helps you build strong connections and manage difficult people. Other people are both our heaven and our hell. Social-view helps you predict other people's behavior (D), feelings (N), and thoughts (A). It also helps you to see how interconnected you are with all living things.
Whose behavior are we paying attention too?
Behavioral streams are behaviors deployed by self, social, and context all interconnected and related to one another.
It is critical to notice behavioral streams and how they are functioning across three dimensions of interconnectedness- self, social, and context
- Self View (DNA-V)- Self-view helps you break free from self-limiting beliefs. You are not defined by your past behavior (D), feelings (N), or thoughts (A). You are capable of growing, improving, and creating a life in value. You are more than you know.
- Social View (DNA-V)-Social-view helps you build strong connections and manage difficult people. Other people are both our heaven and our hell. Social-view helps you predict other people's behavior (D), feelings (N), and thoughts (A). It also helps you to see how interconnected you are with all living things.
- Context- the broader systems we are part of including, power differentials, privilege, systems, intersectionalities, family systems, community systems, cultural systems, barriers, etc.
Defining Workability and Harm Across Behavioral Streams
Workability
Does the behavior support movement towards what is meaningful to the self, social, and context view?
Harm
- Physical harm - physical pain or injury, illness, or any impairment of physical condition
- Psychological harm - Duration or intensity of environmental conditions that evoke or elicit a narrow or rigid behavioral repertoire (neglect, discrimination, targeting, masking). Including aversive, coercive, or deprivation conditions.
- Social harm - lasting impact on the individuals ability to make and keep social connection with individuals in their valued contexts
- Contextual harm - Damage to the physical context or limited access or no access to valued contextual spaces
- Financial harm - impairment of financial assets
Language to build a perspective bridge
We all have our unique history with language based on all the who, what, when, where, why and how of our lived experience! Even the most concrete language can create a perspective gap. Think about an animal… I bet we both didn't think about the same one!
As language becomes more subjective, the perspective gap grows. We may be using the very same words but meaning very different things! Happy Medium Language supports us in narrowing the lived experience language gap by creating labels and definitions for common environmental contexts.
The Noticing Grid
A one page noticing tool to support generalized workability, resourced supports, and new ideas try across self, interconnected relationships, and valued contexts.
**please note, this tool has some topographical similarities to zones of regulation and the incredible 5 point scale that are often used to force compliance or conformity. The Noticing Grid functions very differently!**
ABC Skill Access
No one shows up exactly the same every day. Take into consideration the complexity of being human by noticing how an individual is showing up that day or that moment. Modify the environment and expectations to support them in being the best version of themselves every day. We know every human shows up the best they can!
Shared Control
Almost all aspects of connecting with others engages shared control between two or more humans. While supporting, the continuum of shared control can ebb and flow between supporter and individual depending on the context. Life is not all my way or all someone else's way. We share control over our environment!
Creating doable opportunities to find workability!
There are lots of spaces to learn! Because of our history with our selves, interconnected relationships and context, it can be too hard to learn if the individual just tries to gut it out in a live context. This can lead to burn out and harm.
In HMA we look for doable opportunities from the individual's perspective. How can we step into Discoverer space and try? How did it work?
There is always a way out!
There is significant power in knowing you always have the option to say, “no” or “I don't want to participate”. Support is to move you towards your meaning! If it isn't working, an individual has the right to ask to stop.
It is then our job as the supporters to figure out a new or different way to move the individual towards what is essential to them!
Safety rules do not apply, but shared control and collaborative problem-solving can go a long way!