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Podcast 4:2 Blindside by Rage: An IFS Look at Firefighter Parts

[00:00:00] Welcome back to the Parenting Without Power Struggles podcast. If you're on my newsletter list, you may have just read an article that I wrote, an essay about a mom, one of our members, who had asked for some help around a reaction that was escalating with her 14-year-old son. She would ask him to do something, he would roll his eyes, he would slam a door, he would make a, mutter under his breath.

And she found this increasing rage rising inside of her that kind of took over. And if you're familiar with this scenario, then keep listening because I'm gonna share much more about what that's about through the lens of Internal Family Systems. It's a training, a 91-hour training for therapists that I completed recently, and I've been working with this model for a, a couple, three years now, and more and more implementing it in the work I do [00:01:00] privately in my coaching with parents, as well as in my memberships.

Because It's the final piece in this idea of being the captain of the ship. I've been talking about the relationship that most of us wanna have with our kids, where we are steady, we're calm, we're the safe harbor, we're the North Star, we show up with presence regardless of what they're going through.

That is aspirational. That's what we aim for to be able to be the person for them that they can come to, turn to, confide in, regardless of what they're struggling with, and that our capacity to contain or be steady is, in an ideal world, is limitless. However, that would mean we are some species other than human.

And as far as I can tell, I know there's discussion about who people might be, from other [00:02:00] realms, but as far as I can tell we're all human and we come from our own backgrounds, our own perhaps loving and l- lovely and safe early years, and for many of us, not so loving and safe, so we develop these adaptations to accommodate the wounds of our caregivers.

And they don't just dissolve when we have a child. They still live within us. If you were marginalized or ignored as a little one, you came up with some adaptations to cope with that, including, "I must not be worth listening to." But that's really painful. If you were screamed at, yelled at all the time, scared, frightened, threatened, you would come up with some a- some kids would adapt by becoming very fiery and feisty, pushing back, being defiant.

That doesn't dissolve just because you're an adult. Some others might become very small. They might shrink. They [00:03:00] might r- pull away from relationships that don't feel safe. So we are who we are. We're shaped and formed by the experiences that we lived through in our young, vulnerable years when we were so dependent on our, those caring for us, the foundation of our attachment, whether it was secure or insecure.

And now we're parents, and it's very unrealistic to think that those experiences that live inside of our consciousness, our being are gone. They are there. Now, the good news, the very good news is that as we do our work and get to know those parts of us that adapted, that retract, that hide, that scream, that react, that shame, that threaten, as we get to know what's going on the mechanism through our own work, then gosh, it's just let's, [00:04:00] bring out the parade because we then...

A lot of things happen as a result of that. The first is that we have a better life with our kids. We're less intensely reactive. We're m- we are more the captain of the ship. We're able authentically to be present and calm and connected even through the rough and stormy seas. It's not just conceptual or repressive, don't feel your feelings.

It's genuine. We actually can inhabit a place of what in the IFS world is called yourself, capital S self And we get to break patterns so that our children don't inherit from us, as we probably did from our parents, and they from theirs. They don't inherit kind of a, a set of patterns ways of reacting to reactivating difficult emotional experiences.

We break the pattern. W- we stop the kind of, the m- the cascading through the [00:05:00] generations of this kind of, these adaptations that can be quite unhealthy, painful, damaging to our lives and our relationships And we just feel better. I know for me doing this work, 'cause I am doing the IFS therapy and I'm working with parents now in the coaching using this model, it's so gratifying to s- just shed some of those parts of ourselves that have just restricted us.

I remember I did a class a couple years ago with Gabor Mate and wonderful session. All the classes are still on my website. You're certainly welcome to browse. There's many amazing in-depth 90-minute deep dives into every topic under the sun. Tours, siblings, anxious kids, and the best people have joined me sharing their wisdom.

But at the end of our session with Gabor Mate, I said, "So what's your closing thought? What advice would you give parents above all else?" And he said, "Work on yourself. [00:06:00] The best thing you can do as a parent for your children is to work, do your own work. Work on yourself." So that's really what I'm about.

I've been doing this for such a long time as a, first a teacher and then a therapist, an educator, a coach, a writer. And it's immensely satisfying to see the transformations that can happen. So going back to the parent of this 14-year-old who asked this question f- for one of our member calls she was explaining, no surprise, that the reaction to her son slamming a door, rolling his eyes, was like lightning.

A switch goes off. It's not like the thermostat where you gently adjust the temperature. It was just zero to 60, or zero to 160. Just rage. And of course she unleashes this on her son, and then he pulls back. He feels hurt and withdraws, and might be [00:07:00] angry, and she just said she feels so much shame. And when she says she's sorry he doesn't really take it in because it keeps happening.

And that's the thing about saying you're sorry, it's great to say you're sorry, but change has to happen as a result of whatever damage has been done or it doesn't f- feel meaningful to the person who's been hurt. So what I explained to her is that we have inside of us protective parts, and if you're familiar with IFS you, you understand that idea.

These are parts. Terry Real talks about them in terms of our adaptive child adaptations. They're ways that we have learned to protect ourselves from early pain or pain that we just can't tolerate. If you have a bruise, let's say I have a bruise on my arm- And I keep touching it, it's gonna hurt even if it's, I'm not pressing that hard.

So we develop these vulnerabilities and sensitivities, and the slightest indication that same pain is gonna [00:08:00] be activated will trigger a reaction. So the parts that act lightning fast with that much anger and power and intensity are called firefighter parts. I love that term because if you think about a firefighter, they have pretty much one job: put out the fire.

Their job is put out the fire. If that means they break down your door, they spray water all over your beautiful living room furniture, smash a window, or whatever is gonna happen, they're not thinking, "Oh, I better be careful here." They have a job and the job is to put out the fire, and they know how important that job is, that if they don't successfully put out the fire, the whole living room isn't gonna even...

It's gonna be ashes. So it, their... The cost-benefit analysis is just put out the fire, don't worry about the [00:09:00] aftereffect. Inside of us, the firefighter operates similarly. So when we fl- fly into that kind of rage, if we feel that we're being a, a part of us, a vulnerable part, an old unhealed part, a wounded part is getting reactivated, the tender spot on that, that bruise is being, pounded on It might be that it's a sensitivity to feeling ignored that she might be reawakening, or feeling disrespected or unimportant or powerless, unappreciated.

Then that firefighter is, "Put out the fire." And it goes into a rage to get the behavior in her son, get him out of the picture or get him to stop, or just express how much pain this activates from inside of her. And she is basically being hijacked, right? If a plane is [00:10:00] hijacked... I had a, a, a dear friend many years ago who was on a plane that had been hijacked, and meant to go here and it went somewhere altogether different, and he ended up being one of the negotiators with the, the people who took over the plane and successfully brought it to where it needed to go.

But, you're passive, you're helpless. Once you're hijacked, you're just watching this thing unfold and you're... Maybe a part of you is aghast. It's like, "Oh my gosh, I don't want to yell at my kid. I promised I wouldn't. This is terrible." And you don't have any, any ability to stop it. That's why we do our work.

That's why I do my coaching and have my memberships because over time and learning what's going on with w- and approaching those moments not with shame but compassion, we can heal those young places inside ourselves that are being protected by that firefighter, right? This is just food [00:11:00] for thought.

I'm in this podcast series gonna focus for a bit on this model, 'cause I think there's so much here, and I wanted to share with you. I'm at ... I've had a long career, gosh, 40 years, close to 40 years as a psychotherapist, a, a teacher, an educator a parent. I'm still learning, still growing, still healing, and, it's my honor and my privilege to share what I've learned and am learning with all of you.

If you wanna do some coaching with me, of course it would be aired. You can change your name and so forth. But I'm happy to bring on a few people who wanna do a little bit of introductory work in this area. So just email support@susanstiffelman.com. Of course, I encourage you to get the newsletter, susanstiffelman.com, and you can browse all the c- all the many classes.

I think there's over 50 classes we've done with Dan Siegel and Mona Delahooke and Maggie Dent and Tina Bryson. So many wonderful people. And I'd love [00:12:00] you to be part of our community. We have a membership, and we have a co-parenting with a, a narcissist membership as well, if you need that support. I do that with Wendy Behary, the author of Disarming the Narcissist: Surviving and Thriving with the Self-Absorbed.

So we're here to serve, but this work that we're doing now, that I'm doing now in this work with IFS and I ... learning to identify the parts, we'll talk in further episodes about what you can do in those moments when the f- the firefighters appear. But the first step is simply gonna be, "Oh That might be a firefighter taking over.

That just noticing that it isn't you, not being fully identified or in that terminology blended, just the first step would be, "Oh, I'm being taken over. Something big is going on here." And not being fully identified that is you, but it's just a part of you, and that part always has your best interests at heart, wants to [00:13:00] keep you safe, sometimes goes about it in a way that can be k- do a lot of damage to your relationships, reckless, but it gets the job done or at least it tries.

So for today, for this week ahead, consider some of the things I've said. If you're enjoying this series and this podcast, I would be so grateful if you would share it with your friends. Let people know about it. Let people know about the work that, that we're doing at Parenting Without Power Struggles.

I'm not big on social media but I love what I do, and I'm passionate and want to reach as many folks as I can. So with your help, we'll do some of that. And as we wrap up, I always like to say this: remember that no matter how busy life gets, look for those moments of sweetness and joy. Stay well, take care, and I'll see you next time.