A Five-Part Series. Part 1: Affirmations
Or another way of putting this is, “Hey, DrDeb. You keep talking up Internal Family Systems and how great it is; why do you also teach other tools?”All the tools fit into each other like a neat crossword puzzle.
But let me back up a bit and share with you my struggle of how I put all this together – and why.
I was sick and tired of doing the kind of couples counseling where
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one person would stomp out angry in the middle of a therapy session.
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all I heard was complaints and all I saw was nasty looks or no eye contact at all.
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people would stop coming and I didn’t know if the problem was solved or if they were sick of therapy.
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I myself was not having fun.
At that time, I was into Cognitive-Behavioral approaches to therapy. After all, we have a mind that should, in theory, work to control us.
So I used to write down for clients an Affirmation that they could tell themselves when they were feeling low. They liked this a lot. It is a simple thing but somehow caught on with my clients.
I was very pleased. But my help didn’t help enough.
Not to suit my standards, anyway.
There were 3 things that I wanted to see and I didn’t –
1. people sticking the process out to the end
2. the process would be fun and enjoyable for me and for my couples.
3. the process would be organized and laser focused on the goal of a happy marriage, nothing less.
So I made a crazy decision.
I would leave the quiet safety of my office and plunge into the online world. I would create a course that took people step-wise through learning and loving who they were and then who the person they married was.
People would have to pay ahead of time to guarantee they’d stick to the program til they reached their goals.
But people would have every tool they’d need to relate to each other with open and honest communication from a place of compassion and intimacy.
And they’d have it in far less time than conventional therapy.
In fact, it would BEAT convention therapy because it would get them there when conventional marriage counseling would give up and tell them to get a divorce.
Mind you, none of this existed.
There are many programs that are about a B- in success. There are Church weekends and there are famous-person weekends. The glow wears off quickly because these do not make permanent change.
The famous weekends don’t help you discover your deepest Self or that of your partner.
And they most certainly don’t teach how to tame your triggers.
But my goal was to do all that.
I started exactly 4 ½ years ago online with my course. And I tweaked it.
And tweaked it.
And tweaked it some more.
Because nothing but the best would be good enough for YOU.
Yes, you.
My clients count. My clients are human beings with hurting hearts who want things better.
And I want that for every one of you.
And I’ve got the formula now. My formula is air-tight.
It takes care of the fast learners and the slow learners.
(Really that’s a joke. The slow learners aren’t slow at all; they’ve just had more trauma, more pain in their lives.)
It takes care of the ones who analyze and the ones who feel.
Because I want to be sure that you’re covered.
So let’s go over the Tools and you’ll see just what I mean:
IFS Internal Family Systems is our central tool. It means that we all have a “family” of parts of us living inside of our bodies. Some parts are helpful managers. Others are flame-throwing reactors. Still others are lost and unwanted children that we once were and don’t want to remember.
In addition, we all have a Self which is way more than the sum of the parts.
In my program we learn to map and track our parts and recognize when we have become dominated by them instead of being led by our wise Self.
Pretty important stuff. Cleans out the debris of childhood and gives a new lease on life.
But you don’t start to work it until you get into Week 7 of the program.
Why?
Because the other tools prepare you for IFS in an organized way that people can relate to. Plus they stand on their own.
Let’s look at them.
Affirmations
We make positive statements to encourage us to do better and feel better and those are called Affirmations.
But I leave those Affirmations in the dust.
Because one person’s Affirmation could be another person’s joke. You can’t make canned ones. So we help you tailor Affirmations to the exact issues in your life.
For example, let’s say Susan lacks confidence. She could pick up a book of Affirmations by the cash register of her local card shop. But if she reads “I am getting more and more confident” and she doesn’t believe it, then what?
We do it differently.
We have her keep a journal of times she has been confident and we change the language of the Affirmation to, “I notice my confidence increasing sometimes.”
See the difference? It’s not as strong – which is good because it’s tailored to her own experience.
More than all this, I recently realized that later on, when people are deep into their IFS work of discovering themselves and they may get dominated by parts that try to be helpful but are the exact opposite . . .
. . . then making Affirmations is a reminder from one’s wise, compassionate, and intuitive Self of who one really is.
So if, one day, Susan did not do something that took confidence and that voice in her head started putting her down, she could read the Affirmation above and tell that scolding, judgmental part of her,
“It’s okay. I am confident sometimes. And I’m human. I don’t have to be confident all the time.” That is how the Affirmation gets her back into her Self energy and out from under the domination of her judgmental part.
Affirmations is what your Self looks like.
And we need them dearly when parts take over.
It is for this reason that I kept on with the Affirmations that I had started years ago. When people are used to putting themselves down, a reminder that they have done well in the past means that they could do well in the future.
Affirmations are only one small tool in the arsenal of my program. The next few posts will describe the others.
