Understanding our Emotional “Parts”
I’m excited about my interview this week with Derek Haswell, Co-Founder of Ten Percent Happier, executive coach, and expert in Internal Family Systems.
In a nice coincidence, my late step-father was a therapist and IFS practitioner and proponent, so I’d heard about this approach and had an instant openness to it.
IFS is a type of therapy that helps people understand their various emotional parts (e.g. the “exiles”, or parts that have experienced trauma, shame, fear, or pain, usually from childhood), and how these parts influence our behavior. Think about these parts as a family, where they may come into conflict with each other and lead to problematic behaviors and conflicted internal emotional experience. These include wounded parts, painful emotions, and parts that try to control.
When we’re rolling along in our day to day lives, we’re generally not conscious of these various emotional parts and the roles they may play in our actions, communication, and emotional health. And when we are going through hard times and fall into reactivity and anger, this is all the more true.
Derek said he likes to ask “who’s driving the bus?” – in other words, which emotional part is dominating our behavior at any given time. If we’re driven by anger, or a desire to control, or shame – our corresponding actions (or reactions), will not get us what we want in important personal or professional relationships.
I’ve been looking at myself through this lens, and in particular the part of me driven by the anger which drives the bus when I feel criticized (particularly by someone I love) and that criticism lights up the “exile” part of me that feels “less than”. As a kid I didn’t learn how to deal with these emotions, and lo and behold I grew up to be a man who didn’t either. I’ve done lots of personal work in my life, and, on Derek’s recommendation I’m working with an IFS practitioner to explore where my anger comes from, what its role is in my emotional life, and how to transform this into something that serves me in the most difficult and stressful times.
Derek and I also got into meditation – and our mutual experience that having a regular practice can create a bit more freedom from reactivity (particularly when there’s an angry or reactive guy driving our bus). The idea is that there can be “space” between stimulus and response, and that meditation creates more options for us in terms of how we react. I specifically recommend TM.
I trust you’ll find this week’s episode compelling and that some positive change comes out of it for you.
Jon
