Some of the benefits of the IFS approach are:
1. You can review and soothe a voice (sometimes) without the need for finding a conflicting voice or Emotional Schema (to use the UtEB terminology
2. IF we treat these Emotional Schemas as “voices” and “people” we can use all the well established skills applicable to Listening (non judgment, being curious, creating space for a response). (Lots of good books on this including Life & Death Listening by Dan Obliger, hostage negotiator)
yep, read that GREAT post.
Any other suggestions for a starting point on Coherence Therapy?
A visceral, real world example:
Workers who are killed who can’t let go of their tools because it’s part of their identity. I suspect there is a Part (in IFS parlance) that tells them “this is your identity”.
From the book Range (highly recommended):
In four separate fires in the 1990s, twenty-three elite wildland firefighters refused orders to drop their tools and perished beside them. Even when Rhoades eventually dropped his chainsaw, he felt like he was doing something unnatural. Weick found similar phenomena in Navy seamen who ignored orders to remove steel-toed shoes when abandoning a ship, and drowned or punched holes in life rafts; fighter pilots in disabled planes refusing orders to eject; and Karl Wallenda, the world-famous high-wire performer, who fell 120 feet to his death when he teetered and grabbed first at his balance pole rather than the wire beneath him. He momentarily lost the pole while falling, and grabbed it again in the air. “Dropping one’s tools is a proxy for unlearning, for adaptation, for flexibility,” Weick wrote. “It is the very unwillingness of people to drop their tools that turns some of these dramas into tragedies.”
A psychologist told me that the newer “version” of this is Coherence Therapy. I’ve only just started to read up on this.
I’ve gotten enormous benefit just from being aware of the my “parts” without even distinguishing b/t what role they play. Just realizing that what they aren’t having the effect they THINK they are.
Seems like directly entering a Catastrophic situation (burning hand on hot stove) without going through Distress would lead to a more severe Manager (or Exile) like PTSD. I.e, a soldier walking into a firefight & being vs. being shot by sniper. Related: losing a limb suddenly vs. having it amputated (with advance warning) seems to make it more likely you’d have Phantom Limb pain b/c your mind never registered the limb was missing.
FYI, small typo I think:
and your lizard brain has fully cut you out out