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Using
Inner-family Councils
To handle complex personal
problems or major decisions well (e.g. "Shall I/we conceive a baby now?"),
some experienced parts workers call inner council
meetings. Have you ever taken part in a productive council meeting? Shelves of books
have been written on what makes an effective meeting. Here are some key ideas:
Sites: All personality subselves agree on
comfortable, safe outer (real) and inner places to meet. Your real site
should be quiet, physically comfortable, and as undistracting as possible.
Clients who have tried inner-family councils often evolve a preferred real location
to hold their inner meetings, though such gatherings can take place anywhere.
Some people will have their
parts convene in a richly appointed (inner) Board room. Others will be more
comfortable at a custom-designed retreat center by the water, or by a sacred
council rock on a mountain or shore. What kind of a setting would help your
parts meet most productively?
Empathic
Leadership:
Your
calls each meeting, and is clearly
of it. S/He may delegate
portions of the meeting to another subself, and/or ask small groups to do some of
the overall task at hand.
Clarity and Focus:
Your Self decides who attends. S/He helps all attending parts understand what the
specific current objectives are, and keeps them on track throughout the
meeting. Some councils can be to brainstorm or fact-find ("does
anyone know about...?"). Others can focus on evolving plans,
rebalancing subselves’ responsibilities or role changes, or evaluating
complex life-decisions.
Respectful Order, and Rules:
Through experiment and experience,
your subselves will learn that they (usually) each
have contributions to make, and have a right to be respectfully heard by
all. Your Self will have each part speak without interruption, and balance
who gets "air time" (e.g. calmly
any subself who hogs the
meeting). S/He will invite the opinions of quiet parts, and genuinely care
about all subselves'’ ideas, anxieties, and needs.
As with any gathering, some
rules of order need to be observed for the group to get anything done. One
key guideline is that only one part talk at a time, and that all others
really listen. Others are to respect all different viewpoints, and stay
focused on the issues at hand, rather than on
or parts’
traits and character. Each part brings the potential for a valuable
contribution!
Clear Decisions and Outcomes:
Using brainstorming, empathic
respectful
and
skills, your Self will lead the council to clear,
wholistically-optimal short and long-term decisions. If delegations and
specific responsibilities are needed, all subselves will understand and agree
enough with them.
Inner councils help all parts
to know and appreciate each other, and to build trust in the leadership
skills of your Self and other
Periodic meetings nourish inner-family morale and
coherence, and ensure that all personality parts feel informed, important, and
appreciated. Can you imagine a successful sports team, acting troupe, or business enterprise that didn’t have regular well-led staff meetings?
Parts’ councils can provide
unexpected opportunities. One of my clients would lie on her couch in the
evening dark for 20" - 40" to conduct inner meetings. Soon
afterwards, she wrote meeting minutes, and later read them to me in our work
together.
These became a kind of diary for her. Besides being of great mutual
help in our ongoing work, her series of council meetings provided an
important new role for a young part ("Little Curly") who had
previously been a vexing
As her inner team's coherence grew, this
part agreed (with relief) to refocus her energy. The woman’s
inner
council decided that they needed a Prayer Director to bless each gathering.
Little Curly enthusiastically took the job. The woman later reported that
things were going "better" at work and in her social life.
Wound-recovery Benefits: What
to Expect
I’ve found typical parts
work to be organic. It grows rhythmically at it’s own pace and, like
gestation and grieving, can’t be rushed. Like most natural processes,
inner-family harmonizing can be divided into phases - e.g. a beginning, middle,
and end. You’ll develop your own profile of these. Some common stages I’ve
seen clients experience:
Beginning Phase
-
First learn the Inner
(IFS) concept, and reflexively have a
protective Guardian reject it as
"stupid," "ridiculous," "too weird,"
"dangerous New Age silliness," or "for other people"; or...
-
Start exploring and
experimenting slowly, skeptically, and intellectually; or...
-
Start quickly, with
intuitive, complete acceptance of the inner crew, or...
-
Start somewhere in between.
A
few women or men with overly
may not get into
parts work because they’re
too logical and intellectual to feel or sense their
subselves'
communications and reactions. Other forms of personal growth work can be
effective for them.
Here's what
one co-parent wrote about experiencing the
early phase.
Middle Phase
-
"Catch on," and
put moderate to intense energy into exploring and meeting the inner
family. Begin to experience individual inner energies and/or voices (i.e.
parts) as real. Start to "see" and intuit the personal
implications and possibilities of this work. Tell other people of the
concept, and get various responses.
At this point, some
people stop their inner team-building work because of social disbelief or
disapproval. Others continue privately - perhaps with some added
and/or
Self-led ("centered") people feel less of these.
-
One or more "Aha!" or "Wow!" experiences occur along the early way. In
them, people experience clear physical, emotional, and/or behavioral
changes unmistakably related to their parts work. Ambivalence shrinks or
vanishes. Inner family enthusiasm may spurt, then settle back. People at this stage
may try enthusiastically "selling" others on parts work (go easy
on this!);
-
Experience and skill grow
with inner
communications,
re-doing,
rescuing, conflict resolution, and
learning to
recognize
vs. non-blended Self-states. Initial enthusiasm and
wonder mellows, and the work becomes more methodical. Expectations become
increasingly realistic. Patience, self-awareness, and compassion grow.
-
Depending on their goals
and experience, people may elect (i.e. their Self
chooses) other forms of
therapy instead of, or along with, inner-family work. These might include massage
or group therapy, chiropractic treatments, meditation and retreats,
exercise and/or dietary programs, changing or
joining a church, and attending a 12-step or other type of support group.
-
Periods of inner calm,
balance, and productive serenity gradually increase. Other-focused people
(e.g.
become more equally self-focused
without crippling guilt. Habitual self
and
and reflexive
become conscious and noticeably fade. Physical and emotional
symptoms related to these may decrease. Calm, natural
and boundary-setting and enforcing
grow.
-
Parts-workers may grow
towards calm vocal or written
with people who’s actions
were traumatic recently or earlier in life. The outcome of such events is
(usually) a marked release of old resentments,
and
and an increasing focus on the present, vs. obsessing about - or
- the past.
Ripples from these confrontations may extend to
other similar relationships.
Genuine
forgiveness of yourself and others grows. Some of these relationships
improve, others decline. Former
scorn, or bigotry toward some people (e.g. harsh or neglectful parents)
shift toward compassion. ("Now I see how wounded and unaware Ruth
is.")
-
Other people may comment on
"the new you," "something’s different about you," or
question "what’s gotten into you?" Patterns of impulsive
conflicts with or avoidances of certain other people shift. Sleep, eating, worship,
meditation, and/or dream patterns may change subtly or obviously as
the work progresses.
-
Parts-work slows and integrates comfortably into a larger personal-growth process.
Parts-work habits, rituals, and reflexes develop. Language may shift (e.g.
"we" increases, and "I" shifts toward "a part of
me...";
The word "Self" takes on new meaning.
Inner-family
terminology weaves
naturally into normal thinking and conversation ("I took several
excited parts with me on vacation, and left the anxious ones at
home.") For some people,
(the awareness, appreciation,
and attention to one or more
deepens as inner harmony
grows;
-
Inner-family
workers’ human
relationships alter gradually or suddenly, as they meet others who share
their interest in (or are powerfully threatened by) this work. Informal or
formal parts work sharing-groups may form for a while. Key relationships
often become more or less stressful, as awareness of the dynamic
interplay between "my parts and yours" grows.
Key
relationships often improve if partners are self-motivated (vs.
"required") to try out their own inner-family explorations. Family relationships
can be enhanced, if kids are encouraged to meet their inner families, and
members become comfortable talking about everyone’s parts.
Ending Phase
People end (vs. pause) parts
work at any point along their path. If they work to "completion"
(a relative term), some normal occurrences are:
-
If a person has been using
a professional parts-work coach or Guide, they eventually phase out and continue or stop
parts work on their own. They may return for a brush-up or consultation on
a special situation. They may or may not refer special others to their
Guide.
-
Parts work becomes
automatic, like tying shoe laces. It becomes
integrated into normal living patterns, and dwindles as a distinct
conscious activity. Veterans of this work become selective teachers and facilitators for
others who are ready to explore their inner families.
How Long Does Parts Work Take?
Early in her parts work, one
client’s young
subself kept asking us anxiously "How long will
this take?" She was frustrated by my saying "Sounds like you’d
feel better knowing you’d be done with this work by a certain time.
All I can say is ‘It take as long as it takes.’" Two years
later, we both smile as we recall that Anxious One. Feeling far safer, she’s
stopped asking awhile ago.
Some people use parts work for a particular situation, or for a few months. Others find it helpful for several
years. Generally, it seems the more trauma people experienced as kids, the
greater their inner-family chaos and wounds as adults, the higher their
and protections
and the longer their work toward increasing inner
harmony takes.
A key time-factor is how
motivated and successful you are in at least stabilizing current external
stressors (e.g. work, money, relationships, health). Until our outer life is
consistently calm "enough," it’s hard to find time and
opportunity to get quiet, and do meaningful inner focusing, calming, and
healing. Growth towards inner and outer harmony seems to be interrelated,
and to happen for most of us in small, irregular steps.
Measuring
Progress
As with any personal-growth
work, the yardstick for deciding "Is parts work working for me?"
is in noticeable, persistent, desired
I see clients try out parts
work because some aspects of their life don’t feel good enough, despite
attempts at improvement.
These
aspects range from chronic physical problems (like head or body aches, sleep
or digestive problems,
to the gamut of emotional discomforts:
anxiety; emptiness; confusion; excessive
recurrent
"failures;" and cyclical relationship, security, or work troubles.
Like other therapies,
parts work does not help everyone. Some people do find (in my experience) that the
stressors that caused them to start exploring clearly do shrink (and stay
shrunk), over time. Feeling worthless shifts towards self appreciation,
acceptance, and even
Primitive terror of
shifts
toward peacefulness, as lonely
leave the past and hesitantly accept the glad care of
and
subselves.
thoughts and actions dwindle, and
effective
(vs. aggression or submission) and resulting satisfactions increase.
|
The best measure of
parts-work effectiveness is in how often seekers experience
their true Self as being
of their current life. The symptoms of such times are common: unmistakable periods of clarity, groundedness, "lightness," relaxed energy, calmness, optimism,
focus, and
peacefulness. In other words, episodes of deep serenity, contentment, and
productivity. |
