Internal Negotiation: Dealing With Conflicting Parts

• Begin by taking third person to your experience. Become a skilled mediator.
  Identify the parts and give each a name. Separate the spatially. Imagine one on your left and one on your right.
• Build a representation of each part visually, auditorily and kinesthetically.
  What would they look like?
  What would they sound like?
  What words or phrases would they say?
  What would they feel like, what sort of emotions are associated with each?
• Find the positive intention of each part by chunking up.
  Do this with one part at a time. Start by asking, "What does this part want?"
  Then ask, "Suppose you had that, what would that get you?"
  Keep chuncking up until you reach a high enough level of positive intention.
  Find the positive intention of the other part in the same way.
  Treat each part as you would a person - with courtesy and respect.
• Evaluate the two positive intentions.
  Where do they meet? What can both parts agree on? Both parts are valuable and both parts are needed. Both parts deserve to get what they want. Neither part needs to give anything up in order to agree at a high level of positive intention with the other part. Each part needs the other in order to get what it wants. The conflict between the two means that neither is getting what they want at the moment.
• Settle the dispute by integrating the parts or negotiating a working agreement.
  The parts may need to stay "apart" at this stage. If so, make arrangements with your time, effort and resources so they can both work together, get what they want and not frustrate each other.
  You may also want to integrate the parts. Bring the parts together into yourself in the way that feels most appropriate:
  • perhaps as two sounds merging as one
  • perhaps as two pictures coming together
  • perhaps as two beams of light
  • A good way to integrate is to imagine one part in your right hand and one part in your left and bring your hand together as a metaphor for integration.
• Allow some time for integration.
  What difference has that made? How do you feel?
• Future pace.
  How will it be different the next time a situation arises where there was conflict before.