Bill: Marty as always, loving the conversation that we're having, and I'm glad that we're finally hitting record. Yes,

Marty: good to be back on, on the podcast with you.

Bill: Yep I'm not sure which episode this will be, somewhere around 21, 22, somewhere in there, I think. And this is the part two of IFS, or not just IFS, but adult children leadership.

Bill: How, what did we call that other one? But it's about adult children. It's about leadership. And of course, because I'm a certified IFS practitioner, we're going to be talking about parts and the internal family systems model. And you're going to be talking about listening probably, because that's what you teach and how you coach.

Bill: Yep. But our focus is adult children. And what we did in the previous episode, part one, is that we pulled out the laundry list from the ACA, Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families workbooks and literature. And I think we only got through maybe one or two. I think that's, that was your memory as well, right?

Bill: Yes. And so we thought we'd resume, pick up there. And I think our intention at that time for this episode would be to continue with that laundry list. But since then, I have held a 90 minute IFS for adult children workshop, pretty well attended. I think I had eight people and three people that couldn't get in because they registered too late, but we we had a great workshop and talked about a lot of wonderful things.

Bill: And one of the questions that I asked everybody in the room after we had done some definitions and maybe we should do that now too. Like what is an adult child? What is IFS? But by asking these questions and giving people a chance to journal we came up with some really profound insights and awarenesses about what it's like to be an adult who as a child was raised in dysfunction.

Bill: How would you define adult child?

Marty: I think the key to for me is that, some part of us got hooked in the past, because you wanted to get attention or approval and love and what you and it was not it when it was missing. And so that part got stuck there, something like this is what keeps us, even though we've grown up and we are, in terms of years, we were adults.

Marty: There's a part of us that's stuck in that childhood conversation because it didn't get resolved. Yeah, no, it's and, if you grow up in a very dysfunctional context, there's going to be a lot of those things. And so a lot of the human being is, there are 14 of these character traits, or the makeup, the laundry list, as they call it in ACA.

Marty: I was amazed when I started the program that I could check off probably at least 12 of them, a large number of the 14. And so there's a lot of me that was still. Even though I'm, walking around the world looking like an adult, there was a lot of me that was still stuck in that childhood.

Bill: Yeah. This makes me think, as I hear you define adult child, it makes me think of the ACE score a study that began, I want to say maybe in the 90s by Kaiser Foundation, where they had determined that people that were raised in trauma,

Marty: And

Bill: they found a way in this simple test to ask, just do a survey, ask questions to have you ever experienced this?

Bill: Have you ever experienced this? So on and so forth. And so now the ACE score ends up being from anywhere from your score might be zero. It might be 10 or it might be somewhere in between. And the higher that number, the more accurately they can predict. The more likely, the higher the number of traumas that you've experienced, the more likely it is that you're going to be experiencing current difficulties in your life, including health crisis, relationship difficulties, divorces, addictions, and that sort of thing.

Bill: That's part of also, I think, what happens in the ACA program, which I was involved in for about three years is what are the predictable traits and characteristics of people that were raised in dysfunctional homes? Now, this is a leadership podcast, but there's a really good reason why we're talking about adult children, which is in part, it's a 12 step program, adult children of alcoholics, but it's also.

Bill: A fact of life, which is that a lot of people grew up in dysfunction and now as adults, as you say, are operating from child parts that got stuck back there in those childhoods because there's so much incomplete. There's so much that never got completed. Stayed stuck in a somehow,

Marty: right? And so if you're in a leadership position, when you're in your family or in your at your work, or even in the community, then if those.

Marty: Those parts aren't there because they're stuck in those childhood traumas or dysfunctions. You're unable, I was unable to be my in my full power, my truth. And so the leadership is weak or derelict sometimes, because it's got all this. Complexity to it. It's not clear, authentic power coming out of an adult.

Marty: And so leadership usually fails, or even if it reigns supreme the, the people it's meant to empower aren't feeling that they're not feeling empowered.

Bill: Let's see if we can break that down a little bit and understand it better. Like, why is that? Why, when people are in leadership positions that haven't Completed all that incompletion from the past healed their past to enough of a degree where their leadership is ineffective to enough of a degree where their leadership is effective.

Bill: What's going on there and why is it that people respond to that style of leadership as they do? And maybe we could begin that discussion by starting where the conversation ended just before we hit record. When you said, That someone that's transformed when you're around someone that's transformed you're just drawn to them and

Marty: you

Bill: want

Marty: to

Bill: be like that, that's right.

Bill: That's right. And I mentioned that transformation. May mean different things to different people, but when I think of transformation, I think in terms of moving from an identity based Existence where I have identified somehow with something. I hope to be to an authentic based Existence where I am authentically Shown up as me rather than as the identity that I hope to convey you perceive me. So if I am showing up and transformed into an authentic state, that's what is magnetic. Yeah. That's what draws people to,

Marty: to you. And part of it, I think like you're pointing to my listening to it's the alignment, when there's there's the one thing, there's the authentic person, but then there's this, energy that gets circle, doesn't come directly.

Marty: It has to go around those dysfunctions and traumas that are in there, then it's like the energy gets dissipated. But when somebody is being their authentic self, and there's no other persona that the electricity goes through to get to us, right? That alignment has power to it.

Bill: Yeah. Absolutely. So in an organization, let's just say, let's just set this up so that we're talking about leadership in an organization that can be a business of any kind. It can be a nonprofit business or for profit business. It can be a large corporation or just a, let's just say a restaurant with employees.

Bill: There's going to be leadership there. In fact, I do have a client right now who is running a a kitchen in a restaurant and and he is challenged by the very same things that a CEO of an, of a large organization is faced with. Huh. Lots of decisions, have to make those decision fast, decisions fast often.

Bill: Easily overwhelmed by the demands of the position and the responsibilities decisions and interactions with people that may not really be very well aligned with the purpose and of the organization. Those kinds of things. What he and so many of the people that I've coached come to recognize is that they struggle with leadership when they begin to be concerned about how others are perceiving them.

Bill: That's one thing that gets in the way. I feel, here's something I hear from clients early on. I feel like a fraud. I feel like an imposter. I found myself in this leadership position and I wonder how I got here. I'm wondering any day if whoever made the decision to put me in this position is going to figure it out and ask me to step aside so somebody real can show up and fill the role.

Bill: In the context of the language of adaptive child, which is a part using Terrence Real's language and adaptive child, a part that's still stuck in the past. If a part of me. That is child in nature and maturity and resources is the one that's running the show. Of course, I feel like a fraud.

Bill: Children shouldn't be running corporations or businesses. And if that can get resolved, and that can get resolved as simply as shifting the internal leadership from that adaptive child to the wise adult, which is also referred to in the IFS model as self with a capital S. That self leadership from the inside, when it's conveyed outside to the people in our lives, I believe that too creates that attraction based leadership or magnetic leadership.

Marty: Yeah, beautiful. I

Bill: wonder if it would be useful to talk about some of the things that, that folks identified in this workshop. When I asked them some really hard questions. so much.

Marty: I think, yeah, you're the on our audience will probably identify with some of them. If not all of them.

Bill: Yeah. And if so, if you're listening to this episode and you would like to participate this in this and maybe do some searching for yourself to increase your self awareness. Which, by the way in, in coaching, that's gotta be the first step is be aware of what the problem is that you're trying to solve.

Bill: And so that's what these questions are designed to do. And the first question is something like, as an adult, what do you find the most challenging when it comes to being an adult? I see that question.

Marty: Yeah it's it's revealing. Yes. What were their answers?

Bill: The first one that showed up was fear of being judged by others.

Bill: . So as an adult out in the world, if this, the way this was talked about in the workshop is as an adult out in the world, it feels risky and dangerous to show up as big as I think I might be able to be. Not physically big. Big in, in providing leadership. Stepping forth with ideas.

Marty: Expressing my opinion, right? Giving an order.

Bill: Making commitments and being willing to be held accountable for those commitments.

Marty: Yeah,

Bill: pushing myself to and beyond my comfort edge,

Marty: putting putting for the possibility bigger than that would require us all to be as a team bigger than we currently are, in, in your sense of big, yes, exactly.

Bill: Exactly. So if I have a fear that others are going to judge me, if I make a mistake wrong, if I make a commitment that I can't keep, If I have an idea that gets shot down and if there's a little boy inside of me that's saying, Oh, this is going to hurt if they criticize me. Yeah. I might just hold myself back to take care of that little boy inside.

Bill: So I don't have to feel how scary that is.

Marty: Just as a parenthetical comment here, this is not directly on track. If that's one of the first things that comes up for you that it's challenging about being an adult, one of the first places to look is at your own, the level to which you are yourself constantly judging.

Bill: Brilliant. That's exactly right.

Marty: We don't need to go further into that right now. But these are often a reflection of what's going on inside. I think we should take a moment with this. I think it's really

Bill: important. Okay. If there's a fear of being judged by others, what I hear you saying is that fear probably exists.

Bill: And it's at least correlated with judging ourselves.

Marty: Yeah. How would we know that's out there if we're not doing it in here? Oh, that person that, I find a lot of times with my clients, if they, if I hear them having a recurring judgment of others oh, you said, She was dumb and you said he was stupid and there's this recurring thing about other people's intelligence.

Marty: What do you think about your own intelligence? And usually it's very revealing oh, my gosh, that's why I'm projecting it is because I'm so afraid of my own level of intelligence.

Bill: Now let's break that down a bit further. Into parts. So let's just say that same person exists that judges and criticizes others out there.

Bill: And you're coaching them and you help them to see that yeah, gosh, I guess I judge and criticize myself in exactly the same way. In IFS language, what we would say is there is a part of you that judges and criticizes other parts of you in the way that you criticize others. And it's probably that very same part that criticizes others.

Bill: What is restorative and healing and helps that young adaptive child that does that to soften and allow something different to happen, like the wise adult to step in. And perceive the situation from with it with a more clear lens that reflects current reality would be to understand that young part and why they bring that criticism.

Bill: What are they trying to accomplish often when I'm in session with the client? And I help them to connect with the parts of themselves. Let's say, for example, an inner critic we have layers of other parts to get past before we can actually get a direct answer from the part. But once we get there, the part is likely to say, my job is to protect you.

Bill: And then the next question, if we're still in curiosity, and we're not judging the critic, if we can stay in curiosity and say how do you go about that? You're trying to protect me. How do you go about that? By being critical. Alright, help me to understand. By being critical, that is supposed to protect me.

Bill: What's that supposed to accomplish? How does that protect me? If I can criticize you, Before they do then maybe you won't do that stupid thing that you always do that gets criticism And then maybe you won't have to feel the shame that i'm trying to prevent you from having to feel. Now we if we keep going the next question is going to be Okay, so you don't your job is to prevent me from feeling shame and the critic might say something like yeah stupid Yes, I just told you that

Bill: The next question might be And because why? What are you afraid might happen if you couldn't prevent me from feeling shame? And that critic might say the shame would be too much. Shame is too big. We can't, we wouldn't be able to operate. If shame took over. We wouldn't even show up for work.

Bill: We wouldn't show up in the world. We'd be alone. We'd be in the gutter. We would have no life. It'd be too painful. And we begin to realize, oh, this part that we've maybe demonized and wish we could get rid of, that's the critic, that criticizes others and criticizes us, is actually so devoted because now we understand what's at stake for it.

Bill: For that part what is at stake for that part is if it didn't criticize us. We'd be in the gutter and have no life. It's huge. Wow Now I can really appreciate it and now further down in that conversation with a skilled practitioner or therapist That's been trained in the ifs model We may find out that this part is about three years old four years old maybe five somewhere in there so now in my relationships in my career in my professional life, maybe even in my leadership style, I'm impacted in a very large way by a five year old, a five year old that's helping me to try to lead adults.

Bill: I can't work. Exactly. Exactly. It just cannot work. Yeah. So you can get you already know this about me why I love the IFS model so much is because once we have developed a relationship with that part or, and all the other parts that are organized around the same challenge, because deep inside that leader who has the inner critic.

Bill: is a shamed part. A part that believes what the criticism is saying. I'm not enough. I'm too much. I'm stupid. Whatever version of that is.

Marty: Well, and I want to also bring this back to this interface between, the leader and the world, because though that distinction that the 3 year old picked up.

Marty: It was based on what experiences, the categories and concepts and gestures that were being displayed. And so the 3 year old is stuck in that's what his mom thought, or that's what her dad thought. And, or the church that whatever it was that gave those. Those categories what to feel shame about and what counts is stupid and all of that.

Marty: And so then we go forward dividing our world up according to those. Those notions that were acquired back then. And so we're not being self with a capital S. Self with a capital S is universal self. It's the self that we all share ultimately. And once you've done that internal work.

Marty: To free up that this that the child part child, like part of you that got stuck there, the, those categories disappeared to not disappear, but they're no longer the sole way to cut up the world and understand what's going on. So you're restored to, a more accepting and understanding place.

Marty: And with respect to the people that you're trying to lead.

Bill: And the reason that happens is because those young parts. That thought that they were alone and that it was all on them to accomplish that safety that they're trying to get for us, the protection that they're trying to provide once they realize that they're not alone.

Bill: Once they realize there's other resources in the system that can do a better job. Maybe that's not the best way to say it, but that can that have the capacity. There's other energies within the internal system that has had that have the capacity for being able to deal with an adult life and adult responsibilities.

Bill: Into soften and trust that then those qualities and those resources begin to emerge. Very naturally they're there. We don't have to try to generate them. We don't have to try to be mature. We are underneath the busyness of these parts that still think that what their job is to help us to survive.

Marty: Yeah, I have a quick example was at a funeral and I witnessed 2 of the children of the deceased talking and 1 of them was saying, Something about, don't be so wrapped up, in your own sadness, dad's free now, and you're making it all about you. And of course, the other sibling or yeah, the sibling was insulted and angry and totally not taken care of contrast that because there were the, aspects of the laundry list that play there.

Marty: The adult children talking to each other there. Contrast that to an interview that I saw of Eckhart Tolle. And he was taking questions from the audience and the person raised their hand and basically said the same thing that the first son at the funeral said. But the way Eckhart Tolle responded You know, he was so authentic, so aligned with self that the person in the audience was able to hear this same basic information like, oh, I'm making it about me, but to get it.

Marty: To accept it to be opened up by it, instead of having a reaction and protecting herself from that realization about herself and her behavior. The difference between a really transformed leader, making a difference for somebody versus, somebody just reacting from another adult child, like place.

Bill: Yeah. That's right. I haven't met anybody ever met anybody that's free of these adult child characteristics. When I am being hijacked by one of those parts that's still stuck in the past because something triggered me in the current circumstance, and I respond from that child part that will activate your child parts.

Bill: . And now we were, we're two children on the playground fighting instead of. Two adults in the boardroom making difficult decisions or two government officials or two, two parents trying to figure out how to parent children. Everything in between. Noticing time.

Bill: We're down to about five minutes. I'm wondering if maybe we read a few more that answers to the question. What's difficult about adulting for this group of people that came into the workshop because they'd already identified as adult children, adults who as children grew up in dysfunctional households.

Bill: Some of the other things that came out what's difficult about being an adult is making bad choices that we don't see until they, until it's obvious that they're bad choices. Finally, making choices that are clearly bad choices, but in the moment, we don't see them. Or even if we do see them because of our pride, we've already decided and we can't change our minds.

Marty: And as an adult those things can have consequences that they wouldn't have if you were just a child, right?

Bill: And I've made a bad choice, even as a child, you might say, okay, oh, that was a bad choice, but I can't admit it. I can't change my mind now because then I'd have to acknowledge I made a bad choice.

Bill: And if I made a bad choice, that makes me a bad person. That makes me wrong. And if I have grown up in a, let's just say a critical or violent household. And making a mistake is painful, the punishment for that is painful, I gotta hide that, and I gotta cover it up. And you might think, but I'm an adult now, that's ridiculous, nobody's around that's gonna hit me, nobody's gonna yell at me, that doesn't happen in my life anymore, so why would I still be scared to admit that I made a mistake?

Bill: And the answer to that is because deep down inside is still that scared child that needs to be released, that needs to be healed. And that's very easy to say. And it logically makes sense. But how do you do it? How do you have released that inner child? How do you heal that inner child? And of course, that's what the ACA program is designed to do.

Bill: But that's also what IFS does. IFS does that in a very effective way, very efficient way, allows the inner children to be healed and updated and retrieved into the present moment so that they can share in our current perspective that reflects current reality.

Marty: I'm just thinking, 1 of 1 of the things that I learned in a program long ago was to track these kinds of comes like when you notice.

Marty: Wow, that didn't feel right. I overreacted or. I have a very strong charge, associated with something that just happened. If you, or you, then you want to write down what it was and ask yourself, what is the age? At which that conversation started happening in me, right?

Marty: And then you can identify, ah, That's where I got frozen in the past. And dating those conversations. Sometimes they'll just be, a teenage conversation. Sometimes there'll be an infantile conversation. But that helps you. Then you can look and see what was going on for me in life at that point, that's where I froze.

Marty: And it's a great, it's a great exercise. You get to know yourself inside very well. And then when you go into your practitioner to, to work on these things, you've got a lot more information to help.

Bill: And Marie, there's something about the awareness of, oh, this comes from.

Bill: Somewhere between five and seven years old. This feels and that's another way to ask that question too, is how do I, how old do I feel with this emotion? Yeah. This reaction, how old does this feel?

Marty: Oh,

Bill: and the shame shows up almost always for me. I feel like six years old here. And last time I checked, I'm still 68 years old and I feel like I'm six.

Marty: Yeah. Once for me recently. Just given the state of politics in our country, I get very I just want to escape it. I just want to isolate and numb out like those of the, and I think to myself, wow, where did that, how old am I being here? And it reminds me of being a teenager.

Marty: It's just leave me alone. I don't want the adult world to come in here. I want to go to my room and, do whatever. Exactly. Or I want to run out of the school room and go out back and smoke a joint. That kind of right. Okay. That's teenage energy right there.

Bill: These resources, adult children of alcoholics.

Bill: Internal family systems. ifs-institute.com. Those are a couple of great places to go if you see yourself as an adult struggling to be an adult, you are not alone.

Bill: There are millions of us that have and are still struggling with it. And there are solutions and there's answers. There's ways to find a different way to be as an adult.

Marty: It's adultchildren. org

Bill: Thank you. Adultchildren. org is the website. One more question I'll leave the listener with is, If you identify as an adult child, someone that, that struggles and is challenged sometimes by adulting, someone who feels like a child in an adult body and in an adult world some questions to explore further are, what do I do? What kinds of things do I do to manage how challenging this is?

Bill: Do I numb? Do I dissociate? Do I sex? Do I drug? Do I overwork? Do I Netflix? What do I do to escape how challenging it can be to, to adult? And just consider that if that's what's happening in your life it's not something you can wait out. It's not going to get better unless you do something to make it better.

Bill: What's happening is automatic patterns are running your life for you. Just know that there are solutions. There are ways to work your way out of out of this. You don't have to stay stuck in the pattern. You can begin to feel like an adult in your adult life.

Marty: Yeah. Yeah. And both of us are evidence of the effectiveness of that work.

Marty: You started it

Marty: right. So next time, Marty, thank you. Bye.