Video 078 (Pt 1.3) Dealing with introjects
Use this solution
This intervention can be used to address cultural transmission of racism, sexism, class expectations (as in this video), sexual orientation, appearance, level of success, etc. The purpose of this intervention is to enable people to accept themselves despite the negative and destructive messages they have absorbed.
Cultural expectations can be clearly negative, such as: “Working class people are unintelligent.“ Positive expectations can also be destructive: “Women must always be beautiful.” or “Strong men never cry.” The standard protocol can be used to clear out these internalised introjects but sometimes in conjunction with a process based on Narrative therapy in which the introject is “externalised”, disowned by the client and conquered or expelled with two handed and imagination interweaves.
Originator:
Shapiro, R. (2005). EMDR Solutions; pathways to healing. Chapter 10. New York: W. W. Norton. White, M., & Epson, D. (1990). Narrative Means to Therapeutic Ends. New York: W. W, Norton.
Video production
Matthew Davies Media Ltd, Llanidloes, Powys. www.matthewmedia.com
Take-Away Section
What this covers
Sometimes we have a client whose trauma seems to have its origin in their family several generations earlier. The video is about how to address this situation with EMDR. It draws on a framework derived from Narrative Therapy – you will find further information in the Wrap-up section to enable you to understand and use the framework to inform your own use of the standard protocol, along with Interweaves, to overcome the effects of generational trauma.
In this case, the client was a senior company executive who feared he would soon be fired. Asked why he felt like this, he said that he thought his boss didn’t think much of him, and admitted feeling ‘inferior’ to her. An exploration of this feeling led him to tell about his family history and of their interactions with powerful people over several generations. This was the source of his sense of class inferiority – the introject or psychic object that he had unconsciously absorbed from his family.
How long
15.27 minutes
Related videos
See also Video 070
Go to ‘Take-away’?
Aide mémoire for a step-by-step guide for using this intervention with clients.
See Wrap-up for a description of Narrative Therapy and the five steps in working with a client with an introject.
+ Aide Mémoire
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Make sure the client has “anchors” in the ventral vagal parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system: a Safe Place (Video 050), a Container and Safe State (Video 051) or teaching the Four Elements Exercises for Stress Reduction (Video 054).
Do a thorough history taking with particular attention to current problems and whether they have their origins in past generations or cultural practices. Look out for, and note for future use, any stories that provide an antidote or alternative view of self to the introject.
Now work through the 5 step process:
I. Explain what you intend to do, and introduce the idea of an introject, and name it.
II. Externalise it by:
- Targeting it with the standard protocol – Image/thought, and with the underlying core belief as the negative cognition (NC), find the PC, Emotions, Suds, Body sensations, etc. as normal. If the process stalls…..
- Exploring two areas with the client: a) How the problem introject is affecting life now; b) Identify abilities, strengths, positive achievements that run counter to the introject
- Doing a two handed imagination interweave. Have the client hold the effects of the introject on life now in one hand; in the other hold the self with all the abilities, strengths, positive achievements in the other; do BLS asking, “What do you notice after each set.” until it’s clear that the client is willing/wanting to let go of the introject.
III. Enable the client to disown the introject, first confirming the client is ready to let go of the introject and to disown it. Usually there is no wish to resist this with the client, but if there is, try Level of positive effect (Video 005) or Level of Urge to avoid (Video 004). Once the client is clear about wanting to disown the introject use another imagination interweave to this end. Ask the client if it’s OK to use continuous BLS and you will be asking them questions during this process:
- Ask the client where in their body they are holding the introject and start BLS
- Ask if they are ready to pull it out of their body now
- Ask where/what they would like to do with it (some of the a nswers we’ve had include: throwing it into space/into the sun/encasing it in concrete/throwing it into a raging river/setting fire to it. Note, introducing and installing an imaginary figure like superman to help can sometimes be useful)
- Encourage them to continue with their chosen imaginary action until it’s the disowning/expulsion is complete.
IV. Identify what the client wants to express in their life and install with a further imagination interweave:
- Ask the client what they would like to believe and feel about themselves
- Install and strengthen with BLS
- Return to the incomplete standard protocol from Step ii. : check the SUD’s (initiate BLS if needed until they fall to 0 or 1), clarifiy the PC in light of what the client now believes and feel about themselves, install the new PC as usual and end with the body scan.
V. Finally, focus on the future with a Future template (Video 008) designed to install an optimal response to present and future challenges, taking account of their own beliefs and what is feasible. This phase is about building skills to meet future challenges.
+ Wrap up
Narrative Therapy and EMDR in this video
In this piece, it is not our intention to explain narrative therapy in detail or provide an exhaustive piece on the theory that underpins it. Rather we are pulling out the aspects of narrative inquiry that work alongside the use of EMDR in the case of a generational introject. An introject, as defined in object relations theory, is seen as a psychic object that is unconsciously taken in by a person.
Main premise
Narrative therapy is a form of psychotherapy that describes how we organise and make sense of our experience in terms of stories or narratives. The use of the word “story” here in no way implies that people are living in a fantasy world, or that the stories people construct are fanciful. Rather it implies we construct stories to make sense of our experiences and that the meaning of these stories can point the way to how we can go about our lives in the present and into the future.
The place of story
Narrative therapy helps the client view their life as multi-storied with many plot-lines peopled by different characters. Some of these story lines and characters are helpful to the life the client wants to live and some are unhelpful. The client examines the dominant and less prominent stories they tell and the “characters” they portray in order to understand their values and their ability to live those values. This helps them to deal with current and future problems. The main premise of narrative therapy revolves around how we make meaning of our lives alongside how we see ourselves in our social and cultural structures. Together, these influences largely determine which aspects of our experience we choose to express, i.e. how we live our lives.
The stories people tell about themselves and those told about them are thus important in this approach to therapy. The view is that the story of a person's identity can determine what they think is possible in life. It can also limit possibilities. The work of narrative inquiry starts by identifying values that are held in the client’s life and working out in their history. Once the source of a belief or value is clear, therapist and client are able to co-author a “new story” about the person, often with reference to less dominant stories and values that have been ignored in the past but are now foregrounded and can form the basis for a different future and way of living.
Externalising conversations
Problems occur when what we select for expression is destructive. In Narrative therapy, these problems are “externalised” as part of the way towards a solution. Here is an example: a person seeing themselves as a “failure” is encouraged to see “failure” as something that has “entered” their lives in some way. Maybe “failure” came because of a traumatic event or it might have come from their birth family where criticism and personal abuse were daily events, or where “failure” is the dominant family story told from one generation to another.
In narrative therapy, such “failure” is not seen as an intrinsic part of the self, or as some personality defect, but as a difficulty the client faces in their life. The person is not the problem but the problem is the problem. The failure can then be looked at as a visitor rather than as a permanent resident - a quality that defines the client. The narrative therapist would help the client to change the story, for example, from “I am a failure” to “I am sometimes visited by failure”.
In the same way, the person’s strengths and positive attributes are seen as external to the intrinsic self. In this way, the client can build and practice a preferred identity by incorporating the desired qualities or skills. The client is therefore encouraged to look for and notice exceptions to the “failure” story. Once they can identify times when they have been successful, or when they’ve been able to overcome failure, failure’s power over them is weakened and a new story can be told.
Re-membering practice
Narrative therapy proposes that identities are socially constructed. In the practice of re-membering, the client is encouraged to draw closer to themselves those people who support the preferred story they are constructing about themselves. They would also be encouraged to distance themselves from those that do not support the preferred story. They are literally changing the membership of their lives!
Links to EMDR
In the video of using EMDR with a generational introject, the EMDR therapist uss ideas from narrative inquiry in a five step process to:
- Identify the introject and its source, i.e. the value or belief that underpinned the client’s current life problem
- Externalise the introject and work with the externalised introject to help the client separate the “self” from the introject
- Help the client to disown the introject
- Enable the client to re-author their current life in a more helpful way by installing what they would prefer to express in their life
- Enable the client to manage their future.
In the video case, the value or belief was the client’s negative cognition i.e. I’m inferior. The source of the value was found using a story from the client’s history that identified his father’s belief that “we must know our place” and his great-grandfather’s suffering from attempting to move beyond his place in the social structures of his day.
The EMDR therapist had an externalising conversation to help separate the value from Jim’s sense of self. She then used a two handed interweave to strengthen the separation and the externalisation of the introject; and an imagination interweave enabled Jim to disown and expel the introject from his life before finding a more helpful story to tell about his life. This latter story formed the basis of the positive cognition in the application of the standard protocol to the initial EMDR target. At this point, the therapist uses a future template to strengthen the re-authored sense of self and the client’s ability to use his new insights and skills in his current work context and in the future.