Right Relationships Ready to Assist in Personal Growth

Are you looking to improve yourself? To challenge yourself to do better, to reach higher, to strive for excellence, all in order to make a greater contribution to those around you? Do you want to make a greater impact on your loved ones, the community, and perhaps the world at large? Right Relationships is just a call away and ready to assist.

Sally Erickson and Timothy Bennett, who have been in the Whitehall area for three years are officially hanging their shingle for new clients after refurbishing their Whitehall home and permanently calling Montana their home.

Erickson boasts a 40-year career in the helping fields and a Master’s degree in Child Development/Family Relations and Counseling. With experience supporting domestic abuse survivors, spearheading alternative education programs, and facilitating numerous standalone workshops, Erickson has much to offer to the Whitehall community and is excited to get started.

Erickson has renovated numerous houses and furnished and developed several successful short-term rental properties. In the physical world she enjoys bringing things back to health and life, be that plaster walls or cast-off furniture, and in the realm of human development, supporting people in their physical/emotional/and spiritual well-being.

Bennett is an adult-diagnosed autist with a lifelong fascination with human society at all levels of organization, which probably explains his anthropology degree.

With years of personal empowerment work, community-building work, therapeutic work, and group dialogue work under his belt, he’s become a skilled observer of human behaviors and relationships. His powerful memory, his focus on cultural narratives, and his knack for pattern recognition result in what he terms “data-based empathy,” which gives him keen insight into what’s going on in people’s lives, and allows him to say what he sees with honesty, compassion, and a complete lack of judgment. He’s especially adept at sensing in human interactions the presence of things that we are “not supposed to talk about.”

“We consider ourselves coaches and mentors at this point, rather than as psychotherapists, as we have stepped away from the medical model of “mental illness” into a “growth model,” Erickson said.

A unique aspect of the couple is their niche in working with neuro-diverse couples - where one spouse is diagnosed or suspected to be on the highly-functioning end of the autism spectrum and the other is neurotypical. Bennett was diagnosed with Asperger’s later in life and they have worked out a mutually supportive relationship that includes and makes positive use of his neurology, rather than seeing it as a deficit. They have each come to a deep appreciation for the different qualities and experiences that the other brings to the relationship.

Together, Erickson and Bennett have had significant success in helping both individuals and couples. They’ve noticed that couples often seek help too late, after years of painful interactions and failed communications have left them stuck in patterns of mutual blame. This can be too much for many couples to overcome.

“We can certainly be helpful in helping people to separate and divorce more amicably, but far prefer, of course, to work with people before that point!” Bennett said.

Erickson loves to witness transformation: be that of an individual psyche, a close relationship, a family system, or the restoration of beauty in the form of a home or cast-off piece of furniture. She has the wisdom, skills, and courage to look and speak directly and with compassion to painful and challenging circumstances. She is gifted and blessed with the knack for seeing and articulating unseen potentials and the hidden positive intentions underneath what might be seen as negative or dysfunctional patterns of behavior.

Erickson and Bennett feel that people who are in the throes of active addictions, have serious mental health diagnoses, or who are in the midst of serious physical health challenges will benefit more from working with them once those challenges are addressed. People who feel physically and emotionally safe in their lives, and are thus more ready to continue their journey of growth, will benefit more from Right Relationships programs.

“While we have great empathy for people facing such challenges, we find that our gifts are best used in the service of people who are “okay” but want the challenge to do better,” said Erickson.

Right Relationships will soon be writing a column on mental, emotional, and spiritual growth and wellness for the Whitehall Ledger. In October the couple will host their first workshop and retreat at the historical Boulder Hot Springs in Boulder, Montana.

“Our deep interest at this point is group work. It can be both more effective, and also more financially accessible, to work with people in groups, and we would love to have one or more groups in place. We can see ourselves being helpful in a variety of situations,” Erickson said.

“ One example would be working with people who have experienced how the polarization of politics has caused seemingly insurmountable rifts between their family members, and want support and coaching on how they as individuals can positively influence those relationships. We are also experienced in training people in true dialogue, where people learn to approach differences as a benefit rather than as an obstacle, in order that they might seek together a more profound understanding of issues facing their organizations, churches, or other groups that are experiencing unresolved and draining conflicts or dead ends,” Bennett said.

Toward Belonging: Engaging the Power of Listening, Vulnerability, and True Dialogue, facilitated by Erickson and Bennet, will run Sunday evening, October 1st through Friday morning, October 6th. This four-and-a-half-day experiential workshop will help participants:

• nurture personal growth, awareness, and healing

• overcome barriers to authentic connection and generative communication

• practice tools to co-create collective wisdom and genuine belonging.

“As consultants in many situations we have the ability to identify stuck patterns and structures to bring clarity to business and organizational cultures, and so help businesses and organizations change disconnective patterns and become more effective at achieving their goals,” said Erickson.

The workshop is $375 per person, with a discounted rate of $325 per person for couples or groups. Some scholarship/work trade funds are available. Room rates range from approximately $100 to $150 per night, plus tax and fees. The cost will depend on amenities and occupancy; camping is available for $25 per night. Lodging fees include day and evening access to hot springs spa facilities. The cost for three meals per day is $65 per person, with special food requests included.

For more information on Right Relationships, Sally Erickson, Timothy Bennett, and their upcoming workshop visit rightrelationships.us.