Sam walked in the door, thinking about Rob. “Really,” he thought, “Rob has a lot of nerve. Who does he think he is, anyway? First he tells me not to negotiate with Merryweather and then he goes behind my back and does exactly that?”Sam had a fiery look in his eye as he walked in the house.
That was not at all helpful.
Melinda saw the look and by golly, she couldn’t help saying something.“Oh, you walk in and you give me looks? You just got here and you can’t wait?”
Sam snapped out of the office. It faded in his head. He really looked at Melinda and went from baffled to even more angry.
He threw down his coat, marched to his room and slammed the door. Ten minutes later, he was out the door he wished he hadn’t walked through in the first place.Melinda stood there with her mouth open, knowing – knowing – that she couldn’t possibly have done anything to deserve that behavior.
Oh, yeah, Melinda?
Well. . . .
Then there’s George and Molly.
Molly is trying really, really hard these days to not annoy George. She’s trying to be supportive. His mom just passed and she knows he’s having a hard time.And he’s still at work, working like a fiend, trying to support the family even though his heart isn’t quite in it at this time.
“Hi sweetheart,” Molly says as she gets home from work. She scans the room and feels the emptiness without the kids being there.“Is the babysitter running late with the kids?” Molly asks.
“How should I know?” George explodes. He’s just gotten home, himself.
“Well, I…I …” Molly’s voice trails off. “I did it again,” she thinks, angry at herself for accidentally upsetting George.Should she be?
I don’t think so.
I could write a thousand scripts like these and not run out of scenarios that keep repeating and repeating and repeating. Change the words a little but the pattern is the same –Someone is being misjudged…
Someone feels like a victim….
Someone is triggered by the possibility that they will be criticized….
Someone has needs that aren’t being understood….
Someone always feels wrong….
And so on.
The Same Old Cycles.
How in the world do we ever get unstuck from them?
Traditional couples therapists think that by “discussing” the latest and the greatest in the office, we will somehow “work through” them.Uh…..uh-uh. Doesn’t work.
I used to do that myself. For years.
All I’d get is exhausted people, exhausted from rehashing the same-old, same-old.
There’s a key that I didn’t realize and it seems very few other therapists do realize:People can only talk constructively when most of their feelings/sensations in their body/thoughts are positive, optimistic, and compassionate.
Otherwise, they’re too full of the anger, defensiveness, victimhood, sadness, or anxiety to even focus constructively on the conversation.So there’s a series of steps to go through to get to that calm and connected place of Self-to-Self conversations.
Step 1: Discover the protectors causing the troubling moods/sensations/thoughts
From an Internal Family Systems perspective, these moods or sensations in the body, or streams of thoughts that bother us are not us. They’re protectors – or what people commonly call defenses – that mean no harm.Please watch the latest replay in the library [see the Guides right here in our group for that link] from January 5 for a more detailed look at the Protectors.
In a nutshell, they came into our lives when we were very young so as to help us because the wisdom of our Self was not quite developed yet. They occupy a bit of brain-space and re-run their routines over and over, kind of on automatic.They’re triggered by stuff that used to hurt us or frighten us as children, and even things that feel the same, like Melinda feeling hurt and assuming Sam’s look was about her when it wasn’t.
Step 2: Discover your Self being hidden behind the protectors
That feeling of being in an energy called Self, which is more than the sum of the parts (ie, the protectors) is glorious.It’s not only calm, but lightened of burdens. It has a sense of “I’ve got this!” from a happy, loving, compassionate heart.
Everyone has a Self, but often our protective parts have “taken over” us so we don’t even realize that we do have one.
It’s a bit of work to notice when protectors have taken over and “who” each protector is. It’s a bit of work to persuade the protectors to let Self shine and that Self can handle whatever the challenge is at the moment.There’s no getting around the time and effort needed to do that….BUT it’s fun! It’s such a great feeling to know your Self can handle Life and reassure those parts that they and you will be okay.
It just plain feels good.
And that’s the draw of this approach. Rather than making people feel bad about the behavior of their protectors, we simply understand what the protector’s concerns are and then allow Self to shine.Step 3: Heal the hurt inner children
The presence of protectors means that as a child, the person was hurt, frightened, humiliated, shut down, invalidated, or abused.
That means that hiding behind each protector is a scene from childhood that holds a vulnerable inner child that we have tried to forget about.The forgetting process doesn’t work. That little kid is still hurt, frightened, humiliated, shut down, invalidated, or abused. That kid is stuck in time in the bad scene from long ago.
How do we know this to be true?
Because when that memory is revisited and the child is rescued from it, the “bad behavior” of the protectors often goes away. The yelling stops, the stomping out of the room stops, the victim thinking stops.Sometimes, the trauma happened often and there are many inner children that each need rescuing from its own bad scene.
But eventually the protective behavior can convert into more positive behavior.Joy can fill in the place where the yelling was. Playfulness can fill in where only logical arguing was. Connection can fill in where fear used to be.
And so Self can shine.
When the kids are rescued, the protectors don’t have to protect any more, and the Self can take control of all of who you are, then you can have Self-to-Self conversations.Some people can master this all by themselves. Most people really do need the help of a highly therapist with specific IFS skills to get through all three steps. But what a beautiful feeling to get there!