Mr. Nice Guy and the Angry Fifteen-Year-Old
Joe is the nicest guy! That’s what most people think about Joe when they first meet him. Joe’s customers absolutely see him as a nice guy. The people that work for him see him that way for a while. His wife and children see that side of him.
Joe has a great big heart, and his first impulse is to help and accommodate.
We had been working together for a while when, in one of our Results Coaching sessions, Joe identified a "nice" part of himself and named him Mr. Nice Guy.
Joe understood that Mr. Nice Guy had been trained by his mother who had worked hard to counter the impact of his raging father. Joe’s dad was a heavy drinker and, once sufficiently intoxicated, a vociferous critic, judge, and rager. Mom's job was to balance out the crazy and unpredictable conditions at home by being over-the-top nice.
Before realizing that Mr. Nice Guy was just a part of him, Joe thought he was Mr. Nice Guy. That’s why he was so confused when, occasionally, he lost his temper with his wife and children. When this happened, he felt both justified and ashamed. Although he eventually said he was sorry, his apologies were laced with blame. “I'm really sorry I yelled at you but you know leaving your clothes on the floor triggers me.”
A few months back, he asked fellow vice president, Bob to draft a bid for services so he could offer it to a promising prospect. Bob told Joe he was too busy and wouldn’t get to it for a couple of days.
Although frustrated, Joe told Bob he understood. He called the prospect and promised he would have a bid to him by Friday, two days later.
But the bid wasn’t produced until Tuesday of the following week. By then, the prospect accepted an offer from another company.
Joe was furious and complained about Bob to his wife and some of the other vice presidents in the company but didn’t talk to Bob about the problem.
During our coaching session, Joe realized how angry he still felt toward Bob although the incident had occured months ago. During our conversation, Joe discovered an angry part of himself that he had buried decades ago. When he was fifteen, during one of his father's tirades, Joe yelled back at him. His father threatened Joe to never again raise his voice again. Joe's mother defended his father and told Joe to be nice to him.
From that day forward, Joe has used his Mr. Nice Guy part to constrain the angry teenage part of him. But occasionally, the anger leaks out at his wife and children. Or, it comes out sideways in complaints about lazy, stupid, and selfish people. Although the fifteen-year-old was hidden, it never really went away.
By the end of the session, Joe realized that he was neither Mr. Nice Guy nor the angry fifteen-year-old. Both these parts are adaptive versions of himself whose roles became habits that play out in his thirty-five-year-old adult life.
Both parts have the same agenda: to protect Joe’s more vulnerable parts. But the strategies they employ are as opposite as his mom and dad.
Joe keeps very busy at work. His employees and peers know he will understand if they can't hold up their end and often deliver less than is expected. Consequently, Joe has been exhausted, overworked, worried, frustrated, and resentful. He's been obsessed with work and exhausted by the internal conflict between Mr. Nice Guy and the Angry 15-Year-Old. He knows his life is out of balance. But until recently, he felt powerless to do anything about it.
By understanding himself as he now does, and with the help of the IFS model, we are working together to update his parts, asking them to recognize he is now a fully resourced 35 year old adult.
As his parts relax and allow the thirty-five-year-old version of himself to be in charge of his adult life, Joe is able to be more assertive at work and more present, energized, and loving at home.
