This week I was in a situation where a Person I Care About was in pain.

(Been working out how I can be a) transparent and b) protect the privacy of the people around me and Person I Care About seems to work. I’ve seen that movie where the person does stand-up and the content is about the people in their life and everyone gets all upset. And wasn’t that a Will and Grace episode too? Anyway – not going to be that person.)

Ordinarily, I would have dreaded that, and probably poked and poked them (either to cheer up, or to let me know what I can do) until some fighting happened. I know, not pretty. Seems my ability to distance myself gets lost somewhere.

However, as I noticed myself closing (rather than opening), I had a flash.

Parts, characters, many I’s

In hypnosis there is a practice where you talk to a part that is causing you a problem and see if, by listening to it and presuming that it has your best interests at heart, you can find a better way that it can do its work.

Havi also does a bit of this in a talking-to-monsters kind of way.

My friend Ceri showed me a diagram once that I think was based on Ouspensky’s work. It looked like a honeycomb with an ‘I’ in each one. It represents the idea that there are lots of selves in our psyche, each unaware of the others, and each one thinking it is the Self.

In our meditation school, there’s a similar idea called characters.

Or, as my friend Jane once said to me when I was freaking out on a meditation/regression retreat feeling pulled in a hundred different directions:

‘Yeah… there’s a lot of people in there, eh?’

Awareness yay

In the middle of realising that I was about to pick a fight, I payed attention to what I was feeling.
Irritation.

Coming from?

Fear.

When I felt the qualities of the part that was scared, I noticed that it felt like a young part.

There’s a whole piece of work you can do at this point about talking to that part and finding out what it needs and stuff – very useful. This was 2am, so I wasn’t really that into doing anything that complex.

All I did was kind of internally ask if there was a part that wasn’t freaked out who could look after everyone (including the young part that was scared).

Turns out that there was – an adult part that can hold its own in an emotionally demanding situation.

Grown up.

Able to keep perspective and realise that this was only a moment that would pass. Able to focus on the needs of the other person.

Result!

No fighting. No poking until fighting happened. Less stress. Bigger biceps.*

(*Ok not that last one. That’s an aspiration. If I could find the inner part that had bigger arms and could make him come to the surface, that would be great. Sigh.)

Lesson for you

Yeah – no.

I’m not going to do that blog thing about, ‘Next time YOU find yourself in a conflict situation, you should…’

It’s all a bit moral-at-the-end-of-the-story Littlest Hobo for me.

I find it useful sometimes rather than say, ‘I hate this,’ or ‘I don’t know what to do,’ sometimes it can be useful to say, ‘I part of me hates this,’ or ‘A part of me wants to do this and a part of me is scared.’

Helps.

(And, yeah, I’d be thrilled if you left a comment or subscribed to my new-born blog, but hey, you knew that.)