Resource, Resilience and Regulation, Part 2: Inner Relationship Focusing
Guest House
Jalaluddin Rumi,
Translated by Coleman Barks
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
INTRODUCTION
In the first article in the Resource, Resilience and Regulation series, we explored the practice of orienting to resources, a method for bringing our awareness to pleasant aspects of our environment in order to foster more presence, grounding, and connection. While this practice is effective for transitioning out of a stress response, it does not metabolize the inner turmoil we may still repeatedly experience as a result of unprocessed emotions. In this article, I offer a means of relating with these challenging feelings in a way that will empower you to transform your relationship with them, thereby enhancing your outer relationships as well.
Our emotions act as an inner navigation system, directing us toward getting our needs met. When we feel joyous, excited, and secure, that is our inner GPS saying “you are on course.” However, when we have experiences of fear, anger, or shame, these are indicators that we may need a course correction, or possibly simply a change in our rate of travel. However, in our culture, most of us are taught to do whatever we can to drown out these signals with distractions, food, sex, prescription and non-prescription drugs, and alcohol. However, doing so is akin to blaring the car stereo to muffle the repeated prompts to “make a U-turn” from Waze after we miss our turn.
Tuning out unpleasant emotions is an understandable adaptation when they just sound like a cacophony that is drowning out the music of life. But what if these dissonant tones of dread, frustration, and agitation are guide tones leading to a harmonious cadence? What if we could learn to decode the wise messages transmitted through these frequencies and apply them to live a life more fully in alignment with what is most precious to us?
I am going to share with you a way of relating with inner experiences that will enable you to do just that. So let’s dive into the step by step process you can begin using right now to cultivate greater compassion for your inner hurt and learn to heed its counsel in order to feel more fully aligned and at peace.
PRACTICE
Begin by doing a body scan, paying particular attention to the areas that may feel spacious, open, settled or otherwise pleasant. Doing so orients you to internal resources in a way that soothes the nervous system, as discussed in the first article in the series. If that feels too difficult, you might notice just outside your body, feeling where your hips, back, and feet are making contact with your surroundings. Feel that support, and notice how your body rests into that foundation as you bring it to your conscious awareness. Can you feel the back of your chair? Your seat? The floor beneath you? How does the rest of your body respond as you increase your awareness of receiving that support?
Then, perhaps turn your attention inward to notice something within that is asking for some care. That may come in the form of tightness, pressure, emptiness, churning, or any other number of sensations. There may be an accompanying emotion associated with the sensation. Once you identify the feeling, use the following words:
“Something in me feels ”
By prefacing the feeling itself with “something in me,” you shift out of identification as your feeling into the very different relationship of being with your feeling. For example, if a strong angry reaction is arising, rather than merging with the feeling by saying “I am angry,” you might say, “Something in me is feeling angry, and I can be with that.” Now, rather than being taken over by your emotion, you are able to accompany and move into resonance with it, thereby beginning to expand your understanding of and compassion for it.
As you continue to remain curious about this inner experience, you might notice how much physical space it occupies within your body. Is it the size of a lemon, a cantaloupe, or a watermelon? If you were going to make a sculpture of it, what materials would most accurately represent the feeling? What is its texture, color and temperature? Is it moving in a particular direction? Are its boundaries diffuse or sharply delineated?
Now, to deepen your relationship with the feeling, perhaps say something like, “I sense tightness in my chest and heat in my face that feels like anger, and I am letting it know that I hear it.” Then, notice if it feels heard by you. If so, you might ask if that area is worried about something. If your body offers a response, in the form of an image, sensation, or simply a knowing, perhaps let it know “I hear/sense this [something in me] is angry about . What it doesn’t want to have happen to me is ."
Another way to reinforce your connection with the emotion is to place a gentle hand in the area where you are experiencing the feeling. Let the feeling know you are listening and present without an agenda. And see if it feels heard. The tell-tale sign that the emotion feels understood is that the quality or intensity of the associated sensations will change, or move to another part of the body, or vanish. Seemingly miraculously, a new insight will oftentimes arise about the situation that is causing the distress. Once the initial feeling is met with compassion, the underlying cause comes into focus more easily. As you begin to tune in to the story the body has been trying to convey and it knows you are listening, it will typically reveal more.
In many respects, our relationships with inner experience behave in the same way relationships with people do. For example, if I am calling your name or gesturing to get your attention, once you have acknowledged me, I can move on to communicating whatever it was that I wanted to say to you, and I don’t need to keep repeating your name or waving to you. The same is true of our emotions. Once they have been acknowledged, they will tend to move onto sharing a deeper truth. The very act of attuning tends to soften these areas… anger may give way to tears of relief at feeling understood. Or a long lost memory may emerge that was too much to process at the time in order to be met in this moment in a way that you were unable to in the past.
Once you feel that the area upon which you are focusing has revealed all that it would like to share for now, you might reflect back something to the effect of “No wonder you feel this way!” in order to validate that experience within. Then notice how that place responds to being acknowledged, perhaps in a way that nobody had ever done previously.
When you get the sense that this conversation with this inner part of yourself is drawing to a close, allow yourself to orient to your environment, and once again feel the support beneath you, and then use your entire body as a sensing instrument to take in your surrounding environment. Take in the sights, sounds and smells. At that point, you might take a moment to note what new awareness may have arisen.
The practice described above is an introduction to the Inner Relationship Focusing (IRF) method that I use in conjunction with somatic experiencing to help clients restore capacity for connection that may have been impaired by various relational trauma including abuse, neglect, abandonment, and enmeshment. This deceptively simple technique has the potential to transform your inner dialog and help you live a life more aligned with your deepest truth.
THEORY
When emotions feel overwhelming, our perception of reality becomes distorted as a result of a heightened threat response. However, when we say “I am sensing something in me that is feeling [a particular emotion]”, we get bigger than the emotion itself by acknowledging it as well as the witnessing presence of the emotion.
This way of relating to our inner experience changes the way the brain processes the feeling. Whereas emotion is experienced in the subcortical regions of the brain, witnessing takes place in our cortex (the medial prefrontal cortex in particular.) So, when we are both curious (cortex) and emotional (subcortex), both of these parts of the brain are simultaneously active and new neural connections are formed between them, promoting greater capacity for regulation and coherence in the nervous system. Having both areas simultaneously engaged is a key feature in renegotiating trauma.
The act of describing the sensations associated with the emotional experience requires that data be transmitted between the midbrain, where the sensation data is located, and the language center (Broca's area) in the frontal lobe, thereby reinforcing the creation of new neural connections. So even if the words we use are entirely accurate or don’t entirely make sense, the attempt itself establishes a different response pattern to our emotions that not only confers immediate relief from the dysregulating effects of the feelings, but gradually reorganizes the structure of the nervous system such that future experiences of this same emotion will be processed in a more integrated way.
One other aspect of inner relationship focusing that promotes nervous system regulation is what I call internalized co-regulation. Co-regulation refers to the process by which individuals regulate their emotions, behaviors, and physiological responses in interaction with others. It involves a reciprocal exchange between two or more individuals, where one person's actions or behaviors influence and support the regulation of another person's internal states. Co-regulation is particularly important in early development, as caregivers play a crucial role in helping infants and young children learn to regulate their emotions, behavior, and physiological arousal.
In co-regulation, individuals provide external support, guidance, and reassurance to help others manage their internal states and adapt to changing environmental demands. This can occur through various means, including verbal communication, physical touch, facial expressions, and emotional attunement. For example, a parent might soothe a crying infant by holding and comforting them, thereby helping the infant regulate their emotions and physiological arousal.
Overall, co-regulation is a fundamental aspect of social interactions, contributing to the development of secure attachments, emotional intelligence, and effective interpersonal relationships. It not only fosters a sense of connection, trust, and mutual understanding between individuals, but also induces biological shifts in cortisol and oxytocin levels as well as in vagal tone.
While no process that we perform in isolation can replace real attunement from another being, Inner Relationship Focusing is a framework that enables us to utilize the same co-regulatory cues that we experience in a relationship with another to independently evoke these same physiological co-regulatory responses internally.
Because the term co-regulation is used most often in reference to the relationship between infant or child and their mother or primary caregiver, I will offer examples of co-regulation that occur in that dyad, and then describe how these same aspects of co-regulation may be expereinced using Inner Relationship Focusing:
Prompting: When a mother senses her child is distressed, she may prompt with a toy. The moment one recognizes oneself to be distressed and takes that as a cue to engage in the practice of IRF is a form of prompting.
Emotional Following: Mother may reflect or elaborate upon the child’s distress. For example, by saying to the child, “I hear that you want the toy, and you are sad that you can’t play with it now.” the child’s experience is validated. Likewise, with IRF, by acknowledging that “something in me is feeling ______”, we are following our inner experience rather than dismissing or rejecting it.
Physical comfort: Mother comforts child by hugging, rocking, holding, etc. With IRF, we place a gentle hand on the area of distress.
Vocal comfort: Mothers may sing, use a sing-song voice, hush, or use nonverbal tones like “mmmmm” to soothe the child. In the same way, with IRF, our inner voice uses a soothing and gentle tone. I often encourage my clients to make audible sounds like “voo” to promote engagement of the ventral vagal system to promote settling.
Reassurance: Mother provides encouragement such as “you can do it” or confirmation of safety “It’s OK, I am right here.” With IRF, by making ourselves bigger than our distress by saying “something in me feels _____,” we create optimal conditions for internalized co-regulation, because the witness can be in relationship with the part of us that may doubt our ability to tolerate an experience, instilling confidence and a sense of being accompanied. We can give parts of ourselves words of reassurance when we adopt the role of a loving and guiding presence.
Redirection of attention: if a child is fixated upon playing with a toy when it is time for dinner and is growing distressed, the mother may redirect the child’s attention to something that may be pleasing to the child that is related to the meal, “Look at all the pretty colors of the food on the plate, which one is your favorite?” In the same way, if we are dysregulated by the intensity of something we are feeling, we may redirect by saying something like the following to our inner experience, “I am sensing that this feeling of __________ is really hard to be with. I am wondering if you would like to take a break for a little bit and listen to the birds chirping outside and then come back to the feeling when you are ready. How does that sound?”
Active Ignoring: Sometimes a child’s fixation on an object or situation reinforces dysregulation. Through active ignoring behavior, a mother may implicitly encourage regulation by continuing to play with a toy when the child’s focus shifts to a more dysregulating activity. Likewise, with IRF, if for example we have a mental pattern of self-criticism, or imagining worst case outcomes, we may maintain our focus upon describing the quality of our present moment internal sensations rather then following the well-worn pattern of blaming ourselves for having them or diagnosing them to be harbingers of some terrible disease.
Following the child’s lead: If a child is digging through a chest of toys, a mother may follow a child’s lead when she notices the child is interested in a particular toy. In the same way, with IRF, as we cultivate the capacity to listen to our inner experience, we learn to follow where our shifting attention leads us in order to expand our awareness and understanding of our needs.
Another benefit of co-regulation is that it is self-reinforcing. As we sense the other person with whom we are co-regulating begin to settle, it cues our own nervous system to do the same. This complex phenomenon of being able to grok another’s emotional state and to be influenced by it is believed to be at least partially mediated by mirror neurons.
By practicing Inner Relationship Focusing when we feel distressed, we confer to ourselves the benefits of co-regulation, supporting greater nervous system regulation and increasing our resiliency and overall well-being. In essence, we become bigger than our troubles.