IFS to De-escalate Conflict: Speaking For Parts

If you've ever found yourself stuck in cycles of conflict with others, this engaging IFS video is for you! Join certified IFS therapist Jenna Riemersma as she teaches us how to speak for our parts and not from them. By doing so, we transform and de-escalate our patterns of conflict.

Transcript

Hi everybody!

Now that you have had a brief overview of the Internal Family Systems model,

I want to teach you a simple tool that will help to de- escalate conflict in your life and mine using the IFS model.

It's a simple technique called Speaking For,

Not From.

I know that doesn't make any sense right now,

So let me add something to that.

We want to be speaking for our parts from our core self,

Not from our parts.

And I'm going to give you an illustration of why and how this is such a powerful technique.

But to do so,

I actually want to tell you a little story of something that happened in my life this last week and how IFS and Speaking For parts completely de-escalated a cycle of conflict.

Well,

You may be aware that cycles of conflict can happen with anyone,

Particularly people with whom we are in close relationship.

A child,

A spouse,

Our mother-in-law,

The neighbor,

Our boss,

A co-worker,

Whoever it might be.

When we have a repetitive cycle of conflict,

What happens is,

In all likelihood,

That person has a burdened part that gets activated,

Which activates one of our burdened parts.

And our burdened part and their burdened part go round and round and round.

Sometimes we don't even have to say anything for that cycle to kick off.

That person might walk in the room and our burdened part goes,

Hello,

I know exactly what part of you is up.

You know what I'm talking about?

So,

Let me explain how this happened in my life last week and how Speaking For my parts and Not From them totally de-escalated the cycle of conflict.

So,

To do that,

I'm going to have to tell you a little bit about how my parts developed and how my dear husband's parts developed.

So,

When I was a little girl,

I am an only child.

There were no other kids in my immediate family or even my extended family on either side for like a million years.

And my dad was in the military,

So we moved all the time.

Now,

Because that meant that I,

As a kid,

Was alone all the time or with a bunch of adults who weren't a whole lot of fun to play with because they weren't kids,

I developed a young part who dearly,

Dearly wanted a dog like for all the world.

And my parents were not really having it because moving all the time,

It's super hard to have a dog.

And my mom is a really tidy individual who likes to have a nice,

Well-run,

Organized,

Clean house.

And a big,

Hairy,

Smelly,

Slobbery,

Sheddy dog really didn't kind of fit with that whole mojo.

So,

As a result,

I have a burdened exile part that's pretty young who really,

Really,

Really,

Really for all the world wants a big,

Hairy,

Slobbery,

Shedding,

Big dog and never had it.

Now,

This part also has had encounters with people who have strong personalities and I have developed a protective part that comes in and causes me to disappear.

This is my little shadow from How to Train Your Dragon.

Just runs in and tries to help me disappear and not be present so that people who are big won't hurt me.

Make sense?

Okay.

Now,

My husband,

On the other hand,

Of course,

At his core has this wonderful,

Calm,

Curious,

Compassionate self just like I do.

And in his early life,

He had some experiences where he felt devalued or unimportant.

So,

He developed a burdened exile that carries a burden of feeling unimportant or devalued.

And he also developed a burdened firefighter that comes in and gets short with or kind of snaps at whatever the situation or person is that's making that part feel devalued so that that will back up or back away.

You can see where this is going,

Can't you?

So,

Fast forward to last week.

Our son is home from college for the holidays and that is the best thing ever.

But,

Not only is he home,

But his slobbery,

Furry,

Hairy,

Shedding,

Wiggly 90 pounds of Labrador puppy is also home with him.

And you can imagine how delighted my little girl part is.

The dog she never had is here.

So,

She is all about it.

She wants to take Thor for a walk.

She wants to throw the ball with Thor.

She wants to do all the things with Thor.

And what's really kind of funny is I can't throw balls to save my life.

It's become a family joke.

I try to throw the ball for Thor and it either goes straight up in the air or straight down onto the ground or over in the flowers or up in the umbrella.

It's hopeless.

I'm just,

It's not my skill set.

So,

Anyway,

My little girl,

She is so happy.

Now,

Last Saturday,

My husband and I took Thor to the dog park.

And not just any dog park.

This was a wonderful dog park filled with other smelly,

Furry,

Slobbery dogs and mud.

Oh my gosh.

Best thing ever.

So,

At the end of the dog park morning,

We had a smelly,

Hairy,

Slobbery,

Muddy,

Stinky Thor in the back of my car.

And it will never come out.

The smell will always be there.

My little girl is so happy.

But,

She,

Like many little girls,

When she gets to do something that she likes,

Says,

Again,

Again,

Do it again,

Do it again.

Because that's what little kids do when they're doing something they like.

So,

On our way home from the dog park,

I saw another field that would be perfect for throwing the ball with Thor.

And so,

I said to my dear,

Long-suffering husband,

Honey,

Can we pull over and go to that park and throw the ball with Thor?

Now,

As you might imagine,

My very patient and long-suffering husband,

At this point,

Is feeling unimportant and and undervalued.

And so,

His protector part came up and got a little bit snippy with me and said,

No,

I don't want to do that.

We've already spent the whole morning at the dog park.

Thor just feels like he's more important than everybody in our family.

At which point,

My little girl felt hurt and my shutdown part came in.

Now,

This is an example of speaking from our parts.

Okay?

My little girl was completely blended with me.

I had been taken over by my little girl and it was she who was asking to go to the park.

Right?

And when I stopped talking and got small,

That was actually this part speaking or,

More to the point,

Not speaking.

When my husband felt unimportant and had the snippiness come out,

That was actually his snippy part,

His move-against part that was speaking.

He was speaking from that part.

Notice it wasn't going so well.

We both felt hurt.

We both felt unappreciated and unsafe.

It brought conflict into the relationship.

This is a conflict that,

Unfortunately,

Is circular.

It tends to happen every time Thor and my son come from college to visit.

But,

On this occasion,

We both took a timeout.

I noticed the parts that were coming up in me and I came back to my husband unblended.

When we are unblended from our parts,

Our self can speak on their behalf.

It can speak for them.

That is a completely different experience than speaking from them.

And when I did that,

I was able to come back and say,

Honey,

I am really sorry that you felt devalued.

That makes a lot of sense to me because I asked and then asked again to keep doing things with Thor when we had other priorities that you wanted to get done that day.

I'm sorry.

Please forgive me.

Would it be okay if I let you know what parts of me were activated in that conversation?

I have this little girl part who's always wanted a dog,

Particularly a big,

Hairy,

Slobbery,

Wiggly,

Big ol' lovey dog.

And that part is ecstatic when Thor is home and just can't get enough and wants to do all the things with Thor.

And then when that part of me experiences the snippy part of you,

I get a shutdown part that takes me over to try to get me out of conflict.

That's what happened for me in our last situation.

My husband immediately recognized what had happened.

He was now unblended from his parts.

He owned the parts that had become activated for him and apologized because,

Let's be honest,

This part can create a little bit of hurt.

He then left that conversation,

Went to PetSmart,

Unbeknownst to me,

And bought my little girl a ball thrower,

Which he brought back to me to present specifically to the little girl part of me as a peace offering from his snippy part.

And he literally,

With tears in his eyes,

Said to me,

I want to offer this ball thrower to your little girl part to make amends for how I hurt her so insensitively when I didn't understand that it was she that was asking to play with Thor again in that field.

Will you please forgive me and accept this ball thrower?

Which,

Of course,

My little girl accepted with enthusiasm and we promptly left the conversation and went and threw balls,

Which I now can throw without hitting all of the floral plantings in our backyard.

It was delightful and really healing and meaningful to all of both of our parts.

It radically de-escalated that circular conflict that had been going round and round and round in our marriage every time our son and Thor,

The 90-pound wiggly slobbery hairy puppy,

Came home.

So now what I want to invite you to do is think about the relationship in which you are most engaged in cycles of conflict.

Is it with your child?

Is it with your spouse?

Is it with your parent?

Is it with your boss?

Whoever it's with,

I that cycle of conflict predictably plays itself out.

What typically starts it?

What parts of you get activated and take you over in that cycle of conflict?

What parts of the other person typically get activated and take them over in that cycle of conflict?

Now in that cycle of conflict,

When those parts have taken you both over,

You're speaking from your parts,

Meaning the parts are speaking through your mouth.

You're speaking as if you are that part of you.

So what does that part of you say?

What does that part of you do?

How does the other person's part respond?

What do they say?

What do they do?

How does that work out?

Does the conflict get better?

Does it get worse?

How do you each feel leaving the conversation when you've both been speaking from your parts?

I'm going to go out on a limb,

Because this is the way parts work,

And guess that in your repetitive cycle of conflict,

Just like mine,

When your protector parts are in charge and you're speaking from them,

It is actually compounding the pain and the burden of the exiled part in the other person,

And their burden protector is compounding the pain of your exiled parts.

So what I'd like to invite you to do is take that scenario or any scenario where you're finding yourself in a cycle of conflict and identify,

Write down the parts of you that you suspect get activated in that cycle.

What exiled parts of you are present?

Do you have parts that feel afraid,

Anxious,

Alone,

Broken,

Unimportant,

Not good enough,

Powerless?

Those would be your exile parts.

Write down as many as tend to show up for you in that cycle.

Now,

What are the protector parts of you that tend to get activated?

Do you have a peacekeeping part that just tries to say whatever the other person wants to hear so they won't be mad at you?

Do you have a fix-it part that tries to fix what comes up in the other person?

Do you have a rage or aggression part that tries to get the other person to back off?

Do you have a self-soothing part that shows up and just eats or drinks or looks at porn after a conflict?

Do you have maybe a shut down part that just tries to get small and shut down so that the conflict will stop and you don't ever want to talk about it again?

That's just a small selection of protective parts.

Go ahead and write down the ones that you identify with in your specific cycle of conflict.

Now,

What I'd like you to do is hypothetically figure out which parts of the other person in this cycle are getting activated and why.

See if you can identify what their exiled parts might be.

Now,

See if you can identify,

This is probably easier,

What their protector parts might be.

Now,

For both of you,

Think through where these parts first originated in your lives.

How did they learn how to try to help you in this way?

Where did they figure out how to do what they're doing?

For our protectors or for our exiles,

Where did they first feel these yucky scary feelings?

So,

Now the magic.

When we have this awareness of our parts and the compassionate awareness of the parts of the other person that are getting activated,

We can come back to them in our core self-energy.

We can speak for our parts rather than from them.

From our self-energy,

We can speak on behalf of the parts of us that have gotten activated.

So,

Let's say I'm a parent and I'm caught in a cycle of conflict with a child who is avoidant.

Let's say I have a child who's anxious about school and avoiding their homework and I have parts that are getting angry and frustrated and controlling.

Let's just say,

Because that's kind of a common scenario right now with,

At the time of this filming,

COVID and lots of homeschooling.

Alright,

So I might come back to my child and say,

Sweetheart,

I need to apologize to you.

I'm realizing that I have a part that feels,

I'm gonna make something up,

Powerless and worried when I observe you not getting your homework done.

I have another part of me that jumps up and takes me over and tries to control your behavior to make you do it,

So my anxiety will go down.

That probably doesn't feel very good to you and I'm so sorry.

That's what's going on for me.

Would you like to tell me what parts of you come up?

Now,

A child may not be able to do that,

But sometimes they can.

You'd be amazed and what a powerful thing that is to realize that part of your child or your spouse or your neighbor or your boss is not all of who they are and your part is not all of who you are and how powerful it is to speak for our parts on their behalf and how they're trying to help us,

But how they inadvertently hurt the other person.

Speaking for,

Not from,

Is one easy and powerful takeaway from IFS for de-escalating cycles of conflict.

Go out and try it.

I hope you enjoy.