“What do you hear yourself saying to yourself about you, your partner, or this relationship?” • Explanation: “I ask what you hear yourself saying about yourself and other people because protective parts try to keep us safe by telling us stories. Though they mean well, their stories are usually colored by past experience and can seriously distort ou

IFIO’s courageous communication borrows from the Imago Dialogue technique (Hendrix, 1988), which was designed to promote a feeling of safety and reveal childhood wounds under troubled interpersonal dynamics.

We hold both partners with respect and curiosity, recognizing the validity of their experience and the vulnerability that drives their protective parts to extremes.

Even as fighting couples accuse and injure each other, they are wondering, “Do you hear me? Am I safe with you? Will you meet my needs?” But they can’t hear this in themselves because their protectors are busy looking outward, chanting, “You can’t be trusted! You aren’t safe! You won’t meet my needs!” To get to those essential underlying questions,

THE AIMS OF COURAGEOUS COMMUNICATION • Promote unblending and co-regulation. • Help the couple move safely from content to process. • Help the protective system trust that a different way of communicating will bring relief. • Invite vulnerable parts to be seen and heard.

Underneath every protector and every conflict between protectors, we find exiled emotional pain.

ROADMAP FOR INTRODUCING COURAGEOUS COMMUNICATION

Speaking and listening well, which both require physiological regulation, call for a level of skill and patience that many couples have not had the opportunity to cultivate.

I think it’ll make a big difference, but let’s try it out and you can tell me if I’m right.