I
n my practice as a psychotherapist and
EFT practitioner, I make extensive use of the “Parts ” process, based on the NLP model of “Six Step Reframe” and significantly expanded and developed by Fran Burgess
www.nlpand.
co.uk in the approach she named Personality Alignment.
Whilst helping a client to meet and communi- cate with their own Personality, Parts can be successfully done through talk therapy alone. I find that adding EFT to this approach signifi- cantly enhances and speeds up the process of alignment and internal “peace-making”.
When trying to make changes in your life, you may have heard yourself say something like, “One part of me really wants to be healthier and go to the gym, but another part just wants to sit in front of the TV eating crisps”, or “It’s like I have an angel on one shoulder and a devil on another”, or “I’ve been really good all week, but today I’ve been really naughty”, or simply “I feel torn between...”
Metaphorically, you can think of your overall personality as a “team of workers”, all striving towards better health, wellbeing and success of the whole system, “the organisation” – you!
The problem arises when some of the team members do not communicate with others, or sometimes reject, oppress or even bully each other – with the resultant inner conflict get- ting in the way of us achieving our goals. We can spot such internal battles in most cases of addictions, eating disorders, autoimmune illness, chronic worry, procrastination, but it is also present in less obvious everyday situa- tions – whenever it feels like we are putting obstacles in our own way.
The first principle for pulling this “dysfunc- tional team” together and helping them com- municate better, is for the therapist to develop good rapport with the Part associated to the addictive or another dysfunctional behav- iour pattern which the client wants to work on. (By the way, you can also do this work on your own for self-help by asking yourself the questions which I recommend below for the therapist to use.)
Whilst there may be quite a number of players in the “team”, at the very least there will be two Parts who play the leading roles – the Part that is responsible for the undesirable behaviour (the client is likely to perceive it as “bad” or “naughty” part) and the Part that is critical, pu- nitive, often perfectionist - this is the so-called Critical Parent ego-state described in Transac- tional Analysis.
The latter has high expectations and blames and chastises the “naughty” part when things go wrong – this part often corresponds with Rebellious Child or sometimes Adapted Child ego-state in TA. With this internal struggle involving criticism and blame, the most likely result for someone recovering from addiction, an eating problem or a bad habit, is the so- called Abstinence Violation Effect (or, to put it simply, the “Sod it!” effect).
When we lapse or make a small mistake on our road to change, the internal critic will rouse such feelings of shame and guilt that the obvious solution is to tranquilise the pain with the addictive substance, food or behaviour. For this reason, it is extremely important for the therapist to show empathy and understand- ing for both the “misbehaving” Part and the critical, perfectionist Part, and not to side with one against the other – the latter approach will simply help to reinforce the ongoing internal warfare.
About the Author
Masha Bennett is a Registered Neurolinguistic Psychotherapist and AAMET Advanced Practitioner and Trainer of EFT.
She combines her private practice with work as a psychological ther- apist in the UK National Health Service, and has taught EFT to professionals and general public in the UK, Norway, Russia, Israel, Latvia, Lithuania, Kazakhstan and other countries.
www.practicalhappiness.co.uk AAMET LIFE AUTUMN 2012
www.aamet.org 41
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