How were we wounded? How do we recover? How do we avoid wounding our children? Pete Gerlach shares his insights.

[LovePrevails]

Hey I just interviewed Pete Gerlach of sfhelp.org! Please check it out and feedback,

I think the info in this video is of vital interest and importance, I hope you all agree.

 

 The link is:

 

Please let me know what you think!

 

[Marc Moini]

Hi Antony!

 

Congrats on the interview! It just so happens that I've been listening to Pete Gerlach's videos recently, after having had them on my list for months.

 

Before listening to this interview, my opinion was that Gerlach's ideas sound quite sound to me, except IFS. Everything he says about psychological wounds, maturity, his communication tips, his tips for improving self-respect, all of this I find right on target and useful, but this idea of subselves to me sounds crazy because there is absolutely no way to know how many someone has, it's like talking about whether angels exist or not. Back in the 80s I studied NLP, which is where IFS comes from as far as I can tell, and I do still believe there is a lot of value in NLP, but not in the bit that IFS took from NLP (the idea of communicating with yourself as if you had multiple parts--but in NLP they are just a metaphor and not subselves, not characters, and you communicate with yourself through all the sensory channels instead of only imagining visuals and monologues) and impoverished (by removing most sensory channels) and also expanded without any rationale by making parts into full personalities (unsubstantiated by any evidence, unfalsifiable, and to me downright irresponsible!)

 

I like how he apparently independently reached the idea that feelings point to needs, that they come from needs. I also like how his perspective is kind to everyone, how he understands that blaming and shaming wounded people doesn't help anyone, not even their victims as a way of protecting themselves from further harm, because in using blaming and shaming on others we almost certainly do it to ourselves too.

 

Again my only reservation is on his use of IFS, because as far as I can tell, even though it is better than nothing, it is not as effective in healing wounds and bringing peace as NVC is. He says he's going to read the NVC book, I think it will be interesting to interview him again maybe next year and find out what he says then!

 

When I hear him say that children need discipline, I hope he will get a different perspective when he does read the NVC book!

 

I really like what you said about empathy, how you developed your awareness of your feelings through practicing reflective listening, and the examples you gave of how this sounds.

Self-empathy to me is the single most important skill to learn, and the key to all the rest.

 

As to the audio quality, it's OK but there is room for improvement. There is some echo, but more importantly the volume is too low, I need to set the volume to the max on my player in order to hear what either of you is saying.

 

Finally, I like how you directed the interview to talk about the various things you talked about!

 

Best wishes,

Marc

[Marc Moini]

Hi Antony!

 

After listening to the video you sent me https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=99HuL_Bk-SU which talks about the creation of the IFS model, I understand how it's basically role-playing in order to help identify the "intention" of the part, similar to in NVC identifying the need that gives rise to a feeling. And the positive regard for each part, the idea that it plays a useful role or at least its intention is to help, I see this as similar to accepting that needs just "are" and they're not "bad".

 

Hm, I heard some NLP jargon later in that video so I went looking and found this where it says that Richard Schwartz was indeed well aware of NLP and Satir and Erickson: http://dreamingofmeta.blogspot.com/2012/11/tao-of-psychology-part-4-internal.html

 

The IFS book I read was by Jay Early, I guess I would have had a more accurate idea of IFS by reading something by the founder himself.

 

Listening to the part where Richard Schwartz is talking about how firefighters intervene even at the risk of hurting someone else or the person themselves, I ask myself this: if Stef knows about this characteristic of firefighter parts, why does he then not consider that maybe "bad" people are not deliberately choosing to hurt others, maybe their "firefighter parts" are taking over and the result is harm to others?

 

(they're also hurting themselves I'd say, since from an NVC perspective it doesn't meet their need for self-respect when they harm others, among other needs that also involve the well-being of others.)

 

In to the Q&A, Schwartz tells how he works with bulimic/anorexic children and helps them stop fighting the parts that make then engage in these destructive behaviors in order to protect them from something else. How when people become curious about the positive intention of a part, instead of thinking of it as "bad" and to be fought, and the part trusts that it's going to be listened to, then the part can provide information as to what it is accomplishing by doing what it does, and it can tell its story, then it can finally feel understood. And how receiving this empathy makes it possible for this part to come out of its fixation on what happened and go back to performing other services for the person instead of keeping them locked into actions that have harmful side-effects. I see the value in this work, how it can help resolve many of these unsatisfactory patterns of interaction inside our own person, and I think it can be much enhanced by making use of the awareness and knowledge that NVC can bring regarding ways of thinking about ourselves and others and how to communicate in a way that leads to conflicts getting resolved instead of worsened.

 

Just a bit later he says how it's having compassion for those parts that allows the process of healing to take place, and again I see the parallel with NVC. This is very different from what I remember hearing from Stef about IFS, it reminds me again of the importance of going to primary sources for getting an accurate idea of something. I had the wrong idea about IFS.

 

I'm curious to find out what Richard Schwartz makes of NVC, it seems he hasn't heard of it yet. I think it can bring him a lot, and maybe he can work in bits of NVC into IFS and get something even more effective than what IFS is now.

 

NVC can be difficult to learn, I find IFS more approachable, so if people start with IFS and then understand NVC too, that would be better than either right now, in my opinion.

 

It seems to me Schwartz is almost there, but from what I can tell he doesn't have some of the communication techniques that NVC brings, though he has the spirit. So the theory could really be useful for IFS, it seems to me.

 

Thanks, hearing Richard Schwartz talk about how he developed IFS has been enlightening for me, I'm glad to be rid of the misconceptions I had about IFS!

 

Best wishes,

Marc