two-chair work (a different practice, perhaps relevant)
in coherence therapy, it's often letting the clients stumble into it - can be useful (bc the surprise is... spontaneous?) - and also sometimes slow
M: "I respect that you don't trust me" doesn't generally arise spontaneously
M is engaging with the parts less as "beings" and more as "perspectives" or frames
Notes
August 15th, 2021 on what this process is about, what it's for, how to describe purpose & structure
M > non-empathetic perspective taking
M > It's not trying to sort out what's going on deep down for the parts. It's creating a context that's conducive to them listening to each other and being able to make sense of it together.
M > Without sorting out ANY of the object-level details, if we can change the overall stance that the parts are able to take towards each other, then there could be a basis for bringing our creativity to bear on sorting out what's going on, rather than fighting or giving up.
M > This process is aiming towards
Juxtaposition ; it's just that what's being juxtaposed is bigger & messier than just a couple of statements
you're juxtaposing two vantage points until they
parallax
S > you had some levels of reconciliation...? one was "I see how anyone in your position couldn't have done anything different"...?
-----
S > In this ITD process, you're taking a situation that was previously a
double bind, and removing the blocks to talking about it!
Steps!
[note this is for two parts in conflict - the person is more consciously identified with Part 1, and less with Part 2]
Internal differentiation
M > throughout this whole period I have one main purpose, and that purpose is internal
differentiation - encouraging the parts to distinguish themselves from each other and recognize their part-ness
S > ...seeing how sticky it is to blend & unblend?
BlendingM > No -- Faith told me not to use the word
unblending for this. She said within IFS it's a technical term and specifically means "
unblending into Self"
What I'm encouraging is for the parts to differentiate from each other and become aware of their part-ness
S > Oh, that they are each a part and not the whole
M > "internal differentiation"... a necessary prereq of internal trust dancing is differentiating, being able to have a conversation
[Symptom identification]
Identify which part the person is more consciously identified with at the moment (Part 1)
Check for subjective recall: "Do you remember what it felt like, when [this conflict happened]...?"
Invite awareness of Part 2, that finds symptom necessary: "...when you were in the headspace where [behavior] made sense to you?
Perspective-taking, reversed - from Part 2, how do you feel toward Part 1?
Notes
From the perspective that was not initially dominant / not
egosyntonic - how did you feel toward the dominant / more identified part?
Invite awareness of Part 1
Perspective-taking - from Part 1, how do you feel toward Part 2?"
Getting on the same meta-page
This meta level involves:
S > On a more "object" level (the level of the symptom, or the thought / feeling / behavior that's in conflict), getting on the same page would involve:
A shared / coherent understanding of each part's viewpoint - what features of the situation matter to each part, what each part is seeing about those features, and what each part is wanting in relation to those features
From there, deciding how to navigate the situation as a whole person, including what "bets" to make (and maybe also what to do "in the meantime")
M > If we're on the same page, then we share a sense of what the next course of action is, or we agree we don't know
M > "trust-building via same-sidedness"
M > Common ground
S > establishing whether the conflict is a functional or functionless symptom
is it important to part 1 that part 2 is upset
M > 90+% of the time it's not, and it makes a surprisingly big difference to say so
M > getting on the same meta-page, which is getting on the same page about the extent to which we're on the same page
Same-sidedness, 1 to 2:
Does it feel true, from Part 1, to say to Part 2, "I'm not trying to make you feel [bad]"?
Check:
Does it feel true, for Part 2, to receive that from Part 1?
Same-sidedness, 2 to 1:
Does it feel true, from Part 2, to say to Part 1, "I'm not thwarting you just for spite; there's something important I'm caring for. And I want your needs to be met, in a way that's compatible with my needs.
Check:
Does it feel true, for Part 1, to receive that from Part 2?
If no, find and articulate the nature of the distrust
M > In this example, we've changed an assertion of "that doesn't matter," to "I don't trust that your reasons matter."
M > We've moved where the negation is, from "it is the case that your reasons don't matter," to "it is not the case that I can trust that your reasons matter."
M > In Wilden: in logic, "not not X" = X, but this is not true in language... Are you mad? -- I'm not NOT mad...
M > delicate
frame dialogue... there's a thing it would feel like for me to trust X; I don't feel that
M > Core NNTD principle: you can't trust what you can't trust
If yes, or equivalent rephrase, move to next
Completion of "Getting on the same meta-page"
you have 2 parts agreeing not just that they have a problem, but what the problem is, in some sense
note that it's not so much about "agreement" here but about co-perception or something
S > And it's not the surface-level disagreement (go on a date or not), but something deeper and more structural... like
Internal Double Crux?
S & M > "This is what's preventing us from talking about it!"
S > This is the stick in the middle of the knot that's preventing it from being unravel-able
And here's another piece:
In this case, they noticed that Part 2 was still kind of pushing away Part 1
Respecting distrust
enter this phase when A expresses distrust towards another B (Parts 1 & 2 could be in either position)
Which part goes first?
S > Having identified the thing holding the conflict in place... which part has more space to maneuver / more emotional slack / etc?
M > oh wait, no, can actually go into this step at any point, if distrust is expressed
Then, to whatever extent feels possible/good/realistic, have B embody and express "I respect that you can't trust X"
M > If that didn't feel accessible, depending on why not, I might back up to acknowledging that A can't trust B, even if not exactly respectful
if that were unavailable, well.
I would figure that B doesn't trust that B won't lose touch with some important thing B knows, if it were to acknowledge A's reality
if this were an interpersonal trust-dance, this is the point at which I'd have A step aside and would turn to B and work with B to develop enough internal samesidedness and self-trust that B could make such a move
it occurs to me though that this could just also totally apply at the scale of a sub-person part, and there might be a similar move to do there
so yeah, I might encourage an
overt statement from B saying "I don't trust that if I acknowledge A's reality that I won't lose something I know"
and likely something in here would give B the capacity to do that
there's also I guess something somewhat more specific that could be going on here though, and might be the blocker here in the vast majority of cases
which is basically that B might not feel that these are compatible:
which points at a failure of differentiation, I guess!
S > this is also a
Cognitive dissonance thing... if 2 incompatible things are trying to occupy the same space, it feels BAD... that's (I think) a main contributor to
Compartmentalization in the first place. Especially if there's also a meta-level block to communication, making it a
double bindS> So I guess one move is... ah, not just a differentiation between parts ( / people) but differentiation in ideaspace
M > yes yes yes! whether you trust me and whether I trust me are completely different questions
S > but they get mushed together if someone has had a frame of "trustworthy or not"
S > hmm, this flavor of
Self-trust stuff seems particularly likely to come up with
Echoism and
solar plexus issues... ways in which other people's perspectives about me feel more real than my own. Often childhood /
Attachment Theory stuff
having gotten an acknowledgement but not a respect for a distrust, I'd explore something about non-naiveness
like, does it seem true to B that someone can't trust what it can't trust, and asking them to somehow trust it anyway is asking them to pretend?
and then conveying "I respect that you aren't pretending to trust me" or something... "I'm not asking you to betray yourself"
oh and there might be a move then available, after trying to work through some of this for B, of getting A to embody & express respect that B doesn't have space to make this move
[Approximate transcript, structural more than verbatim]
< copy in first unrecorded bit from Malcolm notes >
Consciously identified with "I want to go on the date"... but predict that another part will cancel
I feel frustrated. I know that I'll regret not going.
M: Do you remember what it felt like, the last time you cancelled a date, when you were in the headspace where it made sense to you, to cancel?
H: I was anxious and sad. Anxious bc I had a weird feeling "I have to cancel"... sad not because I was cancelling, but some other reason. Idk why I was sad
M: In that mode, how did you feel toward the part of you that booked the date?
H: Angry! Like I was crazy for doing that. I shouldn't have done that.
M: Why not?
H: Because now I'm anxious and sad, and I blame that part.
M: Currently, are you looking forward to the date on Saturday, in principle?
H: Yeah
M: What does it feel like, from here, to imagine a version of you on Friday, who is pissed at current-you?
H: Avoidance... I don't want to become like that
M: Does it feel true, from the perspective of your current mode, does it feel true to say to the other part, I don't want you to feel anxious and sad? Like, I'm not trying to make you feel anxious and sad
H: No. It's more like, I don't care what you're going to feel
[S: I'd say, he's not in Self towards that part, in IFS terms... or like, blended with Part 1]
[M: Yeah, and I keep going - we don't need Part 1 to be friendly toward Part 2 in order to proceed, for trust dancing]
M: Well... it seems like, even if this part doesn't care how the other part feels, its own plans are getting thwarted.
[S:Trying to establish shared purpose?]
[M wants to invent fractional pronouns]
[Note: client name comes up around 10:50]
M: It might feel true to say, "For what it's worth, I'm not scheduling these dates for the purpose of making you feel sad and anxious. I'm doing it for some other reason."
H: That feels true, yeah.
M: Cool. Now I'm going to ask if you can get in touch with the other perspective. Do you buy it? Do you think that part is for real?
[I would've done some more like, actually getting him into the other part... memory and/or somatic...?]
M > I'm wanting the client to speak from kind of a gut sense... I don't feel the need to go "deeper" into feelings unless I don't trust that the part is being accurately represented / if I think the client is "guessing" more than "speaking from"
H: Yeah, that feels true, I buy it.
M: I figured that would be easy to buy... that part had already acknowledged that it doesn't care, and that's consistent with "I'm not trying to upset you; I'm not accounting for that at all."
M: So, there's a few different tones this conversation could take, a few different conversational moves
The part that's been cancelling the dates could say, "Well, you're going to need to care, bc if you want to go on these dates you'll need to sort out what's upsetting me."
But before making that move, it'd be good to do a same-sidedness part move from that other part's perspective.
So if you get in touch with the part that has been cancelling the dates, and say, "Does it feel true to say to the other part, something like, "I'm not thwarting you just for spite. There's something important to what I'm caring for here. I want whatever you're trying to do with these dates to be satisfied; it's just got to be somehow different."
H: Yeah, that feels true.
M: And the part that's scheduling the dates, does it trust that, from the date-canceller?
H: No, it doesn't trust it. It's the same feeling, the feeling of, "that doesn't matter, that's bullshit." So there's no feeling of trust there, no.
M: Ok, cool. So I'm going to invite the date-anticipator part to say to the other part, something like, "I don't trust that your reasons matter."
H: ... (long pause)
M: And I can offer some more verbose phrases, but it sounds like something's already happening.
H: Yeah, that's why we have this, that's the thing, that's the conflict. It seems very real.
[At this point, I would ask the date-anticipator, what would happen if you take date-canceller's reasons seriously? Or, imagine that you take the reasons seriously... what objections arise?]
M > Yeah yeah yeah! That's what you'd do if you were focused on emotional coherence type stuff
H: From date-canceller: That's why I do what I do - that's why I stop you.
M: There's two kinds of things you might mean by, "That's why I stop you."
H: I stop you because you don't care
M: Okay, so we've gotten to kind of the crux of the conflict. So that's interesting! Because a few minutes ago, I offered you a thing to say from date-canceller to date-anticipator:
It doesn't seem to me that that perfectly contradicts the, "I stop you because you don't care," but it's close. Then it makes sense why the other part doesn't trust this part.
H: Yes.
M: I'm wondering if there's a way to easily articulate how those two things go together: I'm not trying to thwart you just for spite, AND there's something missing.
H: There is a feeling that makes sense, that I stop you because you don't care, and there's something missing, but it's really difficult to find what is...
M: Like, what's missing?
H: Yeah. It's a very shallow discussion right now. You don't care, so I won't say to you the real thing. Yeah, I don't care, so I don't even want to know the real thing. And it stops there.
M (reflecting that)... So they're actually in agreement there! But they're not in agreement about whether you should go on a date this week.
[S notes: I would also invite something like, asking the date-cancelling part, what do you think would happen if you go on a date? Imagine that, and notice what objections come up...]
--------
M: From the part that's been cancelling the dates, can you find a place from which to say, and embody: "I respect that you can't trust that my reasons matter."
[Ohhhh Malcolm is doing the ladder-blackberries-anxiety move!! Maybe?]
M > Yeah, it's a move you could've made in that scene
M: And I'm not going to ask you to trust that they matter, if you don't have what you need to trust that.
H: There's some kind of relief
M: Say more about that relief
H: (long pause) It's even difficult to talk about that. It's really...
[I would've invited something like, what's the quality of that relief, as a feeling in the body? And maybe some, "see if you can let that relief be just as big as it wants to be"]
H: It feels like an agreement, that doesn't make logical sense, but it feels like, yeah, when you respect that, we are together.
M: I tear up slightly when you said that. As you said, it's hard to put words to, it's so basic. It's like, "Wait, I can have my reality, though? Like, actually? I'm free to have my reality?"
H: Exactly.
H: That was really magical. When you said the sentence, it seemed like a compromise. But when I tried to embody the sentence, and that feeling, and that part, then it was different, really doing that. It was different than just hearing the sentence. It wasn't a compromise, it was a real agreement.
M: The words are hard, and you're doing a great job of putting into words something that's really subtle and really important. I love it, I love it!
H: Okay, thank you
M: One analogy I sometimes use for this is, if you think about your eyes... If you hold your finger up between you and the camera, and you're like, which side of my finger is the camera on? Well, both - depending on which eye you ask. So the eyes actually disagree, turns out. But the fact that they disagree is a source of tremendous information. That's how you get depth perception, is that your eyes disagree, and instead of having them argue, your brain goes, "Great, great! I'll use your perspective for this, and your perspective for that, and when I put them together, boom!"
And so it's like, you've got one perspective from which it's obvious that you should go on a date.
H: Yeah.
M: And you've got one perspective from which it's obvious that you shouldn't go on a a date.
H: Mhm, exactly, yeah.
M: And, what's the 3D view? But before you can even ask, "what's the 3D view?" you need to get out of an argument.
H: Yeah.
M: I'm interested in knowing... you've done this magical move in one direction, of having the date-cancelling part respect the distrust of the date-scheduling part. I'm wondering if we can find a way to do that in the other direction. What I'm imagining the date-canceller part might say, is something like, "I don't trust that you are taking all of the necessary factors into account, on whatever level of abstraction. I don't trust that you're taking everything into account when you're scheduling these dates."
H: Yeah. Well, now the other part is listening. It cares now.
M: Wow, yeah
H: And now I can see what the real thing is, that the cancelling part is worried about. And it's obvious. [laughing]
M: And it always was! From a certain vantage point.
H: And it's like, you just care about scheduling this, but how are we going to feel afterwards? It's not even worried about that, it just wants the other part to take that into account. How are we going to feel after the date? Are we going to enjoy it, or...?
But that was completely invisible before.
And that's not bad. It's not afraid of that. Just wants to take that into account, that's it.
M: If I were to make a guess... given that you opened this whole conversation by mentioning you had a breakup 8 months ago, my guess is that there's something about how you expect to feel that's in relation to that.
H: No, that makes sense, that feels true. Yeah, there is this feeling of... when you do that, that's really the end, that's the final...
M: Wow... Oh! It's maybe something like, you've been scheduling dates without accounting for how that will feel in relation to the breakup.
H: Mhm, yes. And again, that seems obvious now, but...
M: Cool. Well, it sounds like maybe this move is going to look a bit different, and is in some sense less needed, but still beautiful and worthwhile to make some form of it...
The date-canceller part was like, "I don't trust that you're taking everything into account when scheduling these dates." And you said, "so now the other part is listening." And implicit in the fact that it's listening, is some respect or regard for the other part, as opposed to "your reasons don't matter," which was there before.
Wanting to make sure the date-canceller part can experience that same relief of, "I can have my reality."
H: Exactly. (long pause)
Every time that I get to the point of, "I can have my reality," there is a relief.
M: Yeah. People have no idea the extent to which so much of human conversation is conducted in a way that is saying, "No, you don't get to have your reality," both internally and interpersonally. It's near constant, and it's such a basic thing that it doesn't even occur to us usually how important it is to say, "You can have your reality. It's different from mine, and you can have it."
[Well, of course - because absent
heterogeneous coherence, you have to have either homogenous coherence, or heterogeneous IN-coherence! Like either one of us has to lose, or we both lose the ability to make sense together -- if there's not this multiperspectival / parallax move available. Postmodern relativism one of failure modes of heterogeneous incoherence... becomes useless! "You can have your reality, it's different from mine, and you can have it" -- could end up as a standoff]
And that's in part because we don't trust that others are going to let us have our reality. But then one of the most self-grounding moves can be saying, "I've got a different reality, but also I respect that you've got yours."
And I'm still learning to do that myself, both internally and with other people. Literally just yesterday, someone said a thing to me, and I said, "That's not how I see it!" And ten seconds later I was like, ahhh, what was that? But that comes from the fear that I'm going to have to negate my reality!
I'm afraid that my left eye will really convince the right eye that the finger really is on the other side of the camera.
This is why I'm seriously wondering if it's worth having a fractional pronoun.
So, you've got a date scheduled for this Saturday.
H: Yes
M: How does that sit now?
H: You know, it's natural. That's how it feels. At the same time, there is the part that was previously cancelling the thing, "Ok, just don't forget me. Consider what it's going to mean to your previous relationship." And the other part's not saying now, "I don't care." It's saying, "Yeah, okay, let's do that. Let's see how it goes." Which is interesting.
I still have that worry, I still think about that, consider that.
M: The two parts haven't merged. They're still bringing different...
H: Exactly. But there is no, "I'm going to stop that, I'm going to stop you," as before.
M: Mhm! Both now and in that moment, in the days coming up to the date - which I'm sure will still feel like something. One thing you could do, is you could now ask yourself... because it might not be this part... it sounds like this part is standing up for some other part, there's a kind of mediator quality. Ask your whole system, what do we need to do to be ready for this date, emotionally? Is there more letting go that needs to happen, in relation to the former partner? I could imagine somebody going to a bridge where they had a date, and dropping something into the water - that's just one example.
[I like the
ritual suggestion!]
Saying to your system, "whatever is wanted here, let's do it!" And maybe you can't do that thing before this Saturday, and maybe you need to cancel Saturday's date, but now you're oriented to a process rather than just an oscillation.
The other thing you could do is invite this part that was previously cancelling the date, can you speak up first? Can we talk about this, before cancelling the date?
H: It's the same thing, there's this need for talking again, have this conversation again, listen again. It's different because, before the scheduler didn't care. And now it understands, maybe he wants to cancel again, this is fine, but let's have the conversation. At the same time, it respects, maybe it's not the time for the other part and it wants to cancel again.
M: Wow!
H: Mhm. Yeah, there's a huge shift.
M: Well, that's pretty cool. I've used this technique w/ other people 3 or 4 times now, and it works way better than I was expecting
H: That was unbelievable for me. It feels really magical. And I've had some experience with parts work... was never so impactful, so fast, so direct as that.
M: Cool. [discussing use of video & transcript]
M: Oh! You said you tried to do this on your own... I'm curious where you got stuck?
H: I got stuck at the beginning, really. I could sense these two parts, but I couldn't even make them talk to each other.
M [talking about an experience of trying to self-facilitate, calling a friend, wondering if there's a way to scaffold self-facilitation with writing prompts or an app]
M [there's another thing that might come up with a part distrusting this whole practice itself]
