ABOUT THE ADULT CHAIR
When I discovered The Adult Chair® in 2013, I fell in LOVE with the ease of understanding the model and especially the chair work! Through the years, I have integrated every aspect of this amazing manual for life into my daily existence and in my children’s as well. There is not a day that passses that I do not use the tools I have learned to keep myself grounded, feeling healthy, confident and living in my truth and my most authentic adult self.
I am not going to lie, there are days I love hanging in that Adolescent Chair, but it is exhausting and actually depressing. So, I quickly find my Adult, access my tools and tackle whatever life is throwing at me – and within moments, I am at PEACE. It can work that quickly once you understand what is going on within you and around you. It is forever life changing!
“Are you ready to transform? The result is an easy to follow path towards a happy, peaceful and powerful life.”
- Michelle Chalfant
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 CHILD CHAIR
Your inner child forms between ages zero and seven, and it is the foundation of your true feelings and needs. The inner child is deeply vulnerable, which makes it the source of deep, connected relationships. It is also where early wounding can occur, which shapes our view of the world as we grow up. When seated in the Child Chair, we find creativity, passion, spontaneity, trust and intimacy. The child is our feelings zone.
The Child needs our Adult self because without him/her, the child is naturally programmed to go back to feelings from childhood that may or may not have been positive. They start to get distracted by the emotion of situations and put up defenses, which in turn shuts down or puts up walls to the feelings that help us thrive.
THE ADOLESCENT CHAIR
In adolescence, you begin to develop your own identity and realize that you are separate and unique from the world around you. As the ego forms, so does the desire to protect yourself, whether the daggers are real or imagined. When seated in the Adolescent Chair, we become perfectionist, judgmental and controlling, and we develop a mask to hide our authentic selves from a world that seems cold and rejecting. Most of us live from this place until we awake and decide we are ready to change.
I like to call this the “Middle Chair,” and it is where most of us like to hang out. It’s the world of stories and drama and avoiding tackling the problem from a healthy place.
THE ADULT CHAIR
The Adult Chair represents your highest self: living in the present moment, dealing with facts and truth over stories and assumptions and being able to set boundaries from a place of patience and compassion. While seated in the Adult Chair, we can deeply connect with our inner child’s needs and feelings and objectively observe our adolescent’s behaviors. It is here, and only here, that we can become aware of—and overcome—the emotional triggers and negative patterns that hold us
back.
The Adult Chair is all facts, and I like to look at it as the protector of our child (our feelings). In order to protect, the Adult within us has to notice it is in the Adolescent Chair and recognize it is time to shift and change so we can manage our feelings and emotions. In doing so, we live a life that is less chaotic and less of an emotional rollercoaster. I like to tell my children when drama arises, ask yourself what are the facts and start there!
