During our healing journey we will experience quite a few things that will be too big for us, too intimidating and scary, so frightening that we are kicked outside our Window of Tolerance because we don’t have the capacity to work with them. When we are faced with memories we can always try to contain them. But what about the things that aren’t easily contained like our relationship with other parts or important emotions? And what if just pushing it away isn’t a good enough solution anymore and we really need to deal with it?
Classic exploration
It is common for Ts to ask us to describe a feeling by giving it a shape, color, temperature, texture or material etc. We are choosing symbols to make our experience more accessible through language and therefore easier to understand. When we work with ego state approaches we will often be asked to describe a part, what they look like, how they act, what they typically say etc. Creating an inner picture of the experience we can feel inside makes it easier to relate to this experience. The problem is that imagining these things as being inside of us can get overwhelming. It becomes too real.
Externalizing
The solution is to move the experience outside our body. We do the same thing we do when we explore an experience, only this time we imagine it to be right in front of us and not inside. Then we take the whole experience and imagine placing it in some distant corner of the room. If that is not far enough, place it outside the building or 3 block away, whatever makes you feel safe enough. Suddenly it isn’t an inner experience anymore. There is some distance between us and what was scaring us so badly. We can take a moment to examine the distance to help ourselves to return to regulation. It is ok. The scary thing is over there but right now it is not attacking us or doing anything at all. It is just there, right where we put it. This is a bit like a magic trick because it can lead to instant relief. It is not inside anymore where it made us lose control.
Working with the experience
Once we have calmed down we can look at the place in the room where we placed our experience and see how we feel about it. Our feelings might be dramatically different now. Because we are not in a stress response anymore we can look at the problem from a different perspective.
It might be ok to just leave things that way, keep some distance and regulate ourselves. In cases where it is important that we work with the experience we can decide how we want to deal with it. We don’t have to come closer. Maybe there are things we want to say to the experience to start a conversation from a safe distance. We could imagine creative ways to change it by adding or taking away something, changing the color or material or whatever fits the situation. Maybe we place a filter in the space between us so that when we reach out we only get in touch with certain aspects of the experience or a much lower intensity.
It usually works best when we notice our natural impulses of what we want to do and then check if they are helpful or not. If our impulses are very aggressive we might have found something else to externalize in a different corner and we can come back to it later. Like impulses, our needs can also guide us and tell us what we want.
Always take a moment to check in with yourself after you make a change to see how you feel about it and if this makes you feel more relaxed or more tense. Take your time to notice new feelings and keep changing things until you are satisfied.
Variations
Some people like to use pictures where they paint symbols for their experience. They move them around in the room, look at them from different perspectives, add another layer of paint on top, add a bunch of paintings to surround it, turn the paper to face the wall or do whatever the situation demands. You have to stick closely to your own experience. What you are feeling is the right thing to do. There is no recipe.
Projecting the inner experience onto an item could serve just as well if you are not into artistic expressions.
People with continuous overwhelming experiences like pain or chronic suicidality will sometimes externalize the experience, give it a name and treat it like a companion they didn’t choose but have to come to terms with. It makes it easier to remain calm and level-headed and make good choices. Some things are too difficult to carry inside and then we place them outside.
This is a valuable distancing technique that can make it possible to work with experiences that would usually be too difficult. It adds another option beside uncontrolled dissociation or just locking it away.
Leave a Reply