The following annotated transcript is our fourteenth published demonstration of Clean Language and Symbolic Modelling with a client from a group Ukrainian psychologists and psychotherapists. The group want to use Clean approaches to support themselves and their clients during the ongoing trauma of war. The sessions have evolved over the past three years into a mixture of training, supervision of client cases and live facilitation of participants.
The webinar included an introduction to our approach to ‘parts-work’, followed by a demonstration and a short debrief afterwards.
The transcript of the demonstration has been annotated to provide some idea of what we took into account in deciding which Clean Language question to ask and when.
This session has a number of interesting features. It illustrates how we facilitated a client who presents with :
- Multiple parts (personae).
- An intermingling of memories, stories, reactions and insights
A child part that wants to die because “it’s not possible to live without mom”.
Transcripts of other demonstrations with this group are available at:
List of transcripts with Ukrainian therapists
Introduction to working with 'parts'
Welcome everybody. We are conducting this webinar from the island of Cyprus. That means unusually we are in the same time zone to you in Ukraine.
Anna (Stativka) suggested that an interesting topic for today would be how we use Clean Language in parts work.
Almost all therapy methods have some kind of idea about ‘parts’ and working with parts of a person. Of course Sigmund Freud had the id, the ego and the super ego. And in Transaction Analysis, they have the parent, the adult and the child. Fritz Perls in Gestalt therapy, had topdog and underdog. Carl Jung had archetypes, which you can think of as a kind of part. And a more recent method which is becoming popular, Internal Family Systems (IFS), has a whole family of parts that people work with. We assume you’re familiar with some of these methods of working with parts, is that true? [Nonverbal agreement.]
Maybe the most useful thing that can come out of today is an appreciation of the way we think about ‘parts’, because it’s different to some of the methods we mentioned.
The first thing to recognise is that the idea of a ‘part’ is a metaphor.
People do not have parts. They are whole. But it’s a useful way to talk about different aspects of yourself. In our work ‘a part’ is a symbol that has an intention.
Some symbols are just symbols. They appear in a client’s metaphor landscape but they don’t want to do anything. Sometimes a rock is just a rock. But some symbols want something to happen. They are playing or they want to play an active role in the client system. We call these symbols perceivers. They are able to have a perspective on the landscape and they want something to happen.
If a symbol has an intention, then that’s the nearest thing to ‘a part’. This means that there can be a very wide range of types of perceiver. As well as the common persona like child, parent, monster and so on, some objects or body parts can have feelings and thoughts and want things to happen. [See I don’t know what I want for an example] We considered these as perceivers as well.
We don’t think of them as parts. We think of them as symbols with intention. For example, if a client was to say, ‘There’s a cave and it’s very dark, and the dark is scared’, we would work with the dark in the same way as if the client had said, ‘My inner child is scared’.
And if the client says, ‘I’m in conflict. On one hand I want this, and on the other hand I want that’, we would work with their hands in the same way as if the client had symbolised the conflict with more traditional parts, like a critical part and a playful part.
That’s the first thing to take into account.
The second thing is that we give equal attention and respect to all parts, whether they client thinks they are good, bad, positive, negative, whether they want to hurt or harm or be kind to the client, they get asked the same Clean Language questions.
We facilitate the client to do two things. One, for the symbol-part to have some kind of form, and preferably a location, and second to find out what the symbol-part would like to have happen.
And here’s the third point. There never is just one part. There always must be two in relation to each other. A minimum of two. When a person conceives of a separate part, the separation means they will have created two parts.
And those two symbol-parts will always be in relating in some way. If they are interacting, or simply know of each others existence, they will be in a relationship.
We facilitate the client to be aware that their inner world, their metaphor landscape, contains both parts of a relationship and the relationship itself.
And, once that happens, it presupposes there is a third perceiver observing the other two parts from a different location – a perceiver of the relationship between the two. The client is now operating at a higher, more inclusive level.
Then we ask the client something like: ‘And what would you like to have happen when (that’s the way that it is)?’
Some clients want to get rid of or annihilate certain parts of themself. But it’s rare that they can make this happen.
For example, a client wanted to throw a critical part out of a window.
We asked: ‘And can you throw that critical part out of that window?’
‘Yes’
’And then what happens?’
The critical symbol-part is thrown out the window. It hits the ground and it is killed. It dies – or so the client thinks. Five minutes later, the critical part is back criticising the client during the session!
The critical part is playing, from its perspective, an important role. So it’s not going to stop and it is not going to be annihilated.
Much more common than a part being annihilated or disappearing for good is that parts will change into something else. The form of the symbol will change, it will change location or its function will change, and then the symbol and the client will be in a different relationship with each other.
This is why it’s important to find out the function, the purpose, the intention of each symbol-part. And sometimes that means the client discovers difficult things. Some parts want to do horrible, nasty things. But we do not take sides, we never choose one symbol over another, even if the client wants that.
Rather than trying to make something happen or integrate the parts or resolve the conflict, the way that we work is to support the client to understand how their system is working now and how they would like it to work – and then we see what happens.
We are waiting, waiting, waiting for something in that landscape to change spontaneously as a result of the feedback the client is getting from their metaphor landscape. Then we work with that change and see where it goes. We have no idea where it will end up.
I [Penny] remember a client that was being chased by a monster. The monster had chased her for years, and she’d done everything she could to get rid of it because the monster was determined to catch and to hurt her.
I asked ‘And what kind of determined is the determined of that monster?‘
Even though this question goes to the monster, the client’s system is accessing her experience of ‘determined’. The client said ‘It’s a strong determined. It’s a relentless determined’.
‘And where is that determined?‘
She said ‘It’s here’ [touching her body].
In that moment the client had taken on the perspective of the monster. So we began to develop ‘here’ into a shape, a size, into a metaphor. The client found out that that kind of determined was what she had needed all of her life.
And she said, ‘No wonder the monster chased me all my life because it knew I needed that’.
This example shows you cannot predict the intention of a symbol. The client would have gotten rid of that monster if she could – luckily her wider system was wiser than the client’s wish.
We need to work with somebody and show how we work with ‘parts’. We would never normally ask this, but seeing it’s for a demonstration, is there someone who has a part or parts in conflict that they would like to work with us?
[A participant volunteers.]
Notes
C = Client, F = Penny or James. Translation by Anna Stativka.
All the words we introduced in the demonstration are highlighted in bold to make it easier to (1) distinguish between facilitator and client-sourced words, and (2) see the format of the Clean Language questions we asked.
When Problem, Remedy and desired Outcome are capitalised they refer to definitions in our PRO model:
Coaching for P.R.O.’s
The session
Row | Transcript | Annotation |
1F | So what is it you’d like to work with? | Not the standard opening question because the topic of ‘working with parts’ had been predecided. |
2C | I have an old conflict. I have tried to work with it, but still it comes back. This conflict is connected with loss. More than five years ago, my mom has gone. She was an old lady. And in her last year she was very sick, and her life was not easy because of her health. It seems to me that I was ready for this loss, that she will go soon and I had accepted already this loss. But after a while I noticed that I started to have some self-destructive things, and my health also started to react. And when I started to work with this conflict, I discovered a part of me that thinks that if my mom has died, I also have to die – that it’s not possible to live without mom. My other parts, they want to live. I have children, I have grandchildren. I would like to live. I have a lot of plans. So my other parts they are the opposite. They want to continue my life. But this part that I’m talking about, it thinks that it’s not honest to live without mom. So if my mom has died, so I have to die also. So this is a conflict. | The client has provided a lot of information. The name she gives to this experience is “conflict”. |
3F | Okay, so when that’s the conflict, what would you like to have happen? | Inviting a desired Ouctome given the current situation. |
4C | I would like this part who would like to die. I want her to stop wanting to die. I understand that she’s very sorry and that this is a big loss for her. And at the same time, I would like this part to understand that my mom also would not like me to die because she has died. But, there is such a strong identification inside of me with this part that it’s out of logic. I looks like this part has no logic. | Client provides a Remedy: “I want her to stop wanting to die.” |
5F | Okay, so you want the other part to stop wanting to die. And so, whereabout is this part that thinks it’s not possible to live when your mother has died? Whereabouts is that part? | Followin the client’s first indication of a location “inside of me”. |
6C | This part, it’s in my solar plexus, chest and some here, something in my throat. | |
7F | In the solar plexus, the chest and the and throat. And when it’s in your solar plexus, your chest and your throat, does that part have a size or a shape? | Inviting the client to notice whether this part has a form. This is a contextually clean question since things that have a location will highly likley occupy a space with a size and shape. |
8C | Yes, the size is like that [gestures]. And the shape I don’t know. | |
9F | It’s that size [replicates gesture], and it’s there, in the solar plexus, the chest and the throat, is there anything else about that part when it’s there and it’s that size? | |
10C | It’s emotional, excited – not excited, not excited like joyful, but it’s a kind of anxious. | |
11F | So it’s emotional, excited-anxious, And so how do you know that it doesn’t want you to live? How do you know that? | Inviting the client to attend to her evidence for desire of the “doesn’t want me to live” part. This is a contextually clean question since the client must have some way of knowing the statement is true for the part. |
12C | How I know that it doesn’t want to live. It’s very sad. It wants to look like my mom, and she actually attacks my other parts, because when my mom has died, my autoimmune sickness started. It looks like that this part, it comments, it comments upon my immune system and forces my immune system to mistakenly attack my own body, instead of attacking something harmful from outside, And it looks like a small child that has hysterics. And in this hysterics, this child doesn’t listen to anything or anybody, it’s just crushing everything around. | |
13F | It looks like a small child. And how old could that small child be? | Attending to the “small child” metaphor. This is a contextually clean question since children have ages. |
.14C | Five or six years old. | |
15F | Five or six, Uh huh. And when five or six is having hysterics, what could five or six be wearing? | [See the discussion below that followed the session.] |
16C | I have maybe two images that are changing. Either she is in a yellow dress, or she is just in pants. | |
17F | The images are changing [C: Yes,]. And so when five or six is in hysterics, and is very sad, and is either in a yellow dress or in pants, what happens after the hysterics? | Childen’s “hysterics” tend not to last forever. What state will the symbolic “child” be in after “hysterics”? |
18C | This child is out of energy and she’s tired from this hysterics, and she would like somebody to hug her, but she doesn’t know if there is anybody here. And because of that she is just very tired and she just falls asleep And I now know that there are some people around, my father and my grandmom. And this period of my life is a real situation. My mom was very, very sick when I was this age, and she had an emergency in hospital, and nobody was sure that she will be live. And when I was a child in this real situation, I didn’t do any hysterics, but I was very frightened. | The client recounts a memory that has similarities and differences to the symbolic “child”. |
19F | So there was a real situation. And this child, five or six, now there in the solar plexus, in the chest and the throat that gets very tired with the hysterics, and it gets out of energy and falls asleep. And then what happens after she falls asleep? | Children tend not to sleep for ever, what is the experience of “five or six” following the sleep? |
20C | [Pause] Now I would like to hug her and to take care of her and let her sleep and calm down. | The client is more interested in her desire “to hug” than our question. |
21F | And now you would like to hug her and take care of her, and what kind of hug is that hug that would take care of her like that? | Following the client’s attention. |
22C | I just want to hug her and let her sleep and calm down. So I didn’t understand the question. | |
23F | You didn’t understand what kind of hug? | |
24C | It’s a very good hug. This is a very tender hug, and it reminds me of a situation when I was very, very small. I maybe was seven or eight months old, and I had an infection in my ears, and it was very painful. And it was New Year’s night, and my mom, she was carrying me in her arms all night, because it was very painful, and I was crying. I remember how she was doing it all night, and at last this infection went out, and then I calmed down and could sleep. And this is the hug that I would like to give to this small child now. This hug is very similar to the hug that my mom gave me then when I was seven or eight months old, and it seems that this hug will calm down the pain of this little child, who is now six years old. | The client switches to a story of an important event in her life. And, in terms of the process, the most salient piece of information is that she “would like” to make use of “this hug” in the here and now. |
25F | That’s a tender hug that can calm the pain. And where could the tender of that hug have come from? | Inviting the client to first attend to the source of “tender” (before attending to the action of “give a hug” see 33F). |
26C | From my mom. | |
27F | Whereabouts from your mom? | |
28C | Just from mom. | |
29F | And so does that tender from your mother have a size or a shape? | Inviting the client to “make words physical” (David Grove). |
30C | Yes, it looks like my mom’s body, her figure, and it’s like a bit bigger than a usual human body, and it has some lighting around, like a match with some lighting around. | Two clues that this symbol is out of the ordinary: “bigger than usual” and “lighting around”. |
| 31F | Some lighting around. Anything else about that lighting around a figure of your mother that‘s bigger, where tender comes from? | |
| 32C | About this lighting, it’s like my mom took this lighting from her parents, and then she gave this lighting to me and my brother. | |
| 33F | And so your mother, your mom, took the lighting from her parents, she gave it to you and your brother and you would like to hug this five or six that’s asleep. And can you hug that five or six child that’s tired and sleeping? | Client has said “I would like to hug her” (20C) is she able to? Rather than ask this question at 21F, we gave the client time to get to know the nature of this particular hug. |
| 34C | Yes. | |
| 35F | And as you hug that child, as that child sleeps, what happens to the light that your mother gave you? | Asked because a point of contact between two symbols (the “hug”) is often a prelude to other changes … |
| 36C | This light is just here. It just exists. | … but not in this case. |
| 37F | And when that light just exists, then what happens when you hug that child that’s tired and asleep? | Even so, there is likley to be some kind of effect. |
| 38C | This six year old child would like to go to the hospital, to mom, in this period of time. She would like for father or somebody, and go to the hospital where mom was at that time and to talk about what is going on with her. Because it seems to me that the association has happened in this period. Some dissociation happened, because I have some holes in my memory about this time in my life when I was in this age. And there was something else important at that time. After this hospital, when my mom come home, she had Asthma. My mom started to have bronchial Asthma after this hospital, and it happened that I was responsible for her life and death because my father was at work all during the day. I was responsible to call emergency [services] when my mom had an asthmatic episode. And I had to give her medicine or massage her back. And I had the feeling that if I will be not attentive, or if I will be too slow, my mom can die. So it’s like I was a child and in the same time I was responsible for the life of my mom. And now I’m thinking that maybe just in that time I had this identification with my mom, because I needed to feel when it would be time to call emergency. I had to feel it in my body, and because of that maybe I had this identification with mom. | Metaphors, memories, timeframes and current experience are all merging. “And now I’m thinking …” suggests a potential new perspective. |
| 39F | So when you had this identification with your mom, when you were six years old, and you had to feel it, what would you like to have happen when that’s what happened when you were six years old? What would you like to have happen now? | The question invites the client to set a direction for the work given the complexity of the descriptions. |
| 40C | Now I’m a bit surprised because I have one more parallel, and I don’t know what I would like to have happen. And the parallel is that when my mom was dying, she was in a hospital, and she was out of consciousness already, and I took care of her, and I came to the hospital and I cared for her; like washing her, and I took her in my hands, hugged her, and she died in my hands, actually, I was hugging her like a little girl. And from one side, my adult part is happy that my mom has died not alone, that I was with her And from the other side, it’s not right that she has died. I would like her to live, to live longer. | “Surprise” is often a precursor of something new emerging. |
| 41F | You’d like your mother to have lived longer, and you’re surprised at the parallels, and you don’t know what you would like to have happen now, and you’ve given a tender hug to five or six that was tired and sleeping. And when you’ve given that tender hug to five or six, what would five or six like to have happen now they’ve had that tender hug from you? | If the client doesn’t know what she would like, maybe “five or six” knows what she would like. |
| 42C | I have insight now that maybe there is not only one small girl, but two of them. One of them is this six years old, and another one, it’s my mom in my arms, and it’s not her place. This six-year old, she wants to come down and live and be happy. It seems that what has to be here from my mom – like tenderness and love – I understand this with my head, but it seems like in my body they [weren’t] present. And this six years old, and my mom who was dying, was also in my body. Something like that. | A concluding “insight”. Originally the client thought “this six year old” doesn’t want to live. Now the client knows she “wants to live and be happy”. |
| 43F | Okay. I’m going to suggest that since you’ve had these parallels, and this insight, that you take time to be with this, with all that’s happened, and to wonder, what you would like to have happen, given how it is now. [Pause] Now that the six-year old wants to calm down and be happy, and that’s different to a six-year old that wanted to die. Are you okay if we leave you to contemplate that? | |
| 44C | Yes. | |
| 45F | Okay. Thank you, and we’ll talk to the group. | |
| 46C | It seems to me now that this part that wanted to die, that didn’t want to live, it’s not this part. It’s like mom who would like to, how to say, she’s died, and she would like to have calmness. Okay, she is tired, and she would like to have calmness. So this is another part. This is not this part of me who would like to die, but this is my mom who would like to rest in peace. | The client makes a new distinction between the parts and discovers “this is my mom who would like to rest in peace”. |
| 47F | And it’s very valuable to know that, and it would have to be something that you need to work with later. We’re going to stop now because of the time. Thank you for volunteering. |
The demonstration (including translation) took 40 minutes.
Discussion
Penny [To the group:] Thank you for your attention. We have a few more minutes, are any questions about the process of how we worked?
Participant 1: Yes, I have a question about the five or six year old when it appeared as a symbol, why did you ask about what she’s wearing?
Penny: It gives a form to the symbol in the metaphor landscape. It’s not just a conceptual five or six, that child now has something that it’s wearing. When a child symbol has clothes it must have a body that is wearing those clothes. And bodies can do things! They can move. That’s why sometimes we ask if the child is wearing anything on their feet. If a child is trapped or hiding and wants to move, putting attention of their feet may support that.
Participant 2: It seems to me that you didn’t ask many question compared to other demonstrations of yours I’ve seen.
Penny: Well-spotted. Because of the nature of the client’s material, and especially involving a symbol that says it wants the client to die so it can die, we slowed down (even more than is usual). The client often gave lengthy complex descriptions and we were careful to select pieces that seemed most relevant to the client’s desire for the five or six year old symbol to stop wanting to die. This is delicate material and we want to be ultra-respectful, acknowledging all of the symbols in the landscape. We have no idea where the session needed to go and so we were letting the process unfold at it’s own pace.
James: I’ll just make a final comment before we have to go.
When the ‘part’ is a child, like this session, often a lot of memory will be involved, because we were all children once.
Keep in mind there are the memories, and then there’s what’s happening here, right now for the client. The client is making all sorts of parallels between the past and now. That’s fine, and lots of interesting things came out of that. And regardless of the client is thinking about her expereince, we remember we are working with the client and the symbols as they exist now, during the session.
What was interesting about what happened in this case, was the client discovered these different relationships symbolised by who was hugging whom, and who was being hugged by whom. By the end, the client had come to the conclusion that her mother part wanted to rest in peace.
If we were to continue, we would had worked with this part with her new desired outcome.
We could never have predicted this from the beginning. Sessions like this can get complicated because there was a 5 or 6 year old part, and the story about a 7 or 8 month old child, and the memory of being 5 or 6, and the memory of her mother’s illness over a period of time, and the moment of her death, and the client own health issues. At the same time the client’s is reflecting on, and reacting to all this. It is important for the facilitator to not get overwhelmed by the complexity. It is the client’s responsibility to figure all this out.
Our responsibility as facilitators is to cleanly facilitate the client so that what needs to emerge and unfold, can emerge and unfold. Our role is to support the client to keep the process going. We can’t know what the effect that this session will have. Nor can the client yet. That will become clearer in the days, weeks and months ahead.
Thank you for your attention.
