Page 62 of Vivacity
Ouch.
The guy must be a hundred years old.
I got Topher to fact-check his qualifications thoroughly before I continued with his bio, and I pull it up again on my phone as I sit in his waiting room, which is comfortable but not so luxurious as to make me suspect I’m being ripped off. I once took Jamie to his first orthodontist appointment to find the guy standing outside his Wigmore Street practice, showing off his brand new Bugatti to his assistant. It wasn’t a good look on him.
Anyway, I begrudgingly admit that this guy has a wealth of experience, even if he no longer operates as a regular shrink. Apparently, his PhD thesis was entitledThe Paradox of Executive Control: How Childhood Survival Strategies Undermine Adult Decision-Making in Financial Markets.Honestly, I’d like to take a read of that. And it harks back to what Sophia was talking about in bed the other morning: that idea that we may not be able to control our executive function as fully as we’d like to think we can if it’s being consistently hijacked by old software. I’ll admit that the concept of improving my own efficiency isn’t unappealing. However brutal the next hour is, this guy can potentially give me an edge in business. And, god knows, I need any edge I can get right now with all this Montague bullshit consuming my every waking thought.
Not myeverywaking thought.
I allow myself a little smile as I contemplate what my reward will be when I get back to work.
Sophia.
On her back in one of my suites.
Bare.
Philip,as he has instructed me to call him, has the personal gravitas that his bio would suggest. He’s Black, extremely tall, and wearing a pale blue button-down under a beige crew-neck jumper with khaki chinos so old they’ve lost any crispness. He’s also not a hundred years old. I’d put him more in his mid-fifties. His general demeanour strikes me as far more professorial than commercial, although he must have made a killing in the City before he jumped ship. Maybe it’s the frameless glasses that give him histhoughtful academicvibe.
In any case, he doesn’t look like a quack, which is the main thing. Nor does he look too woo-woo. There’s no incense burning, no weird cats prowling around, and not a crystal in sight. Rather, his consulting room feels more like a study with its twin broken-in armchairs and bookshelves bursting with books on game theory and psychology.
I’m really glad I’m not expected to lie on a couch like in the movies. That would have been a deal-breaker.
We make small talk for a few moments, the point of which is, I assume, to put me at ease. I can’t say it’s working.
‘So, Sophia referred you,’ he comments, ‘and she’s working for you?’
‘Yes to both. She’s very persuasive.’
He gives me a genuine smile, showcasing teeth so white and even that it makes me wonder if he was on Bugatti Guy’s books once, too. ‘She’s a very special human being.’
‘She is.’ That’s something we can agree on.
‘How much do you know about IFS?’ he continues.
‘Very little,’ I admit. Perhaps if I stall, we can use up most of the session on him getting me up to speed and I won’t have to actually do any of the ‘work’, whatever that is.
‘Not a problem,’ he says easily. ‘I’ll give you a bit of background, if I may, but you’ll find that the best way to come to an understanding of it is in practice.’
Drat.
Philip goes on to explain, in an economically articulate way, how the framework was developed from more established concepts by a former family therapist called Dick Schwartz, who was working with families whose teens had eating disorders. His reference to family therapy reminds me uncomfortably of my conversation with Sophia on Sunday morning. When I tried to get out of doing this by explaining to her that Jamie already saw a therapist, she actually laughed.No one in the history of theworld has ever treated a kid successfully in isolation of his or her family unitwas what she said. In other words:Jamie’s not the problem. You are.
Anyway, Dick noticed when talking to his patients that they would consistently refer to distinct “parts” of themselves: the parts who wanted to use food to control or numb, and the parts who would immediately afterwards shame those other parts. It was the beginning, Philip tells me, of a radical shift in thinking from the belief that we operate with one single mind.
‘For so long, we’ve been taught to ignore our inner critic, or silence our intrusive thoughts, or seek a higher plane through meditation and spiritual practice. The main aim of IFS is the opposite. It’s to listen to these younger parts and understand their fears while helping them to unburden themselves so that you can function in a more regulated, rational way like the adult you are. Does that make sense?’
I nod, even though we’re veering into distinctly uncomfortable territory here. I’m not even wearing my suit jacket, but I’m starting to sweat. I hold onto his use of the word ‘rational’ like a drowning man.
‘One of the first things we do in our practice is attempt to unblend. That means that we try to find some distance between ourselves—we call it the Self in IFS—and our parts, because our parts are often very tightly blended with ourselves.
‘So when someone cuts you off in traffic and you react with the temper tantrum of a fourteen-year-old boy, and you just want to ram your car into their tailgate as hard as you can? That’s not you. That’s a part jumping, quite literally, into the driver’s seat. But, god knows, itfeelslike you. And yet, as soon as that flare of anger has subsided, you thinkwhere the hell did that come from?That sense of dissonance, of being able to feel the disconnect between your Self and the part that just acted out, is how we know that we can unblend.’
I make a noise of acknowledgment, because that actually does make sense. God knows, I lose my temper. I have a sudden flashback to that day I interviewed Sophia, when Miles Montague had just hung up on me and I’d shoved all those research reports to the floor like a pissed-off toddler. I literally had felt about three years old in that moment. The injustice of the situation, the helplessness I felt, made me feel like a small child with no agency.
‘One thing I’ll ask you to do when we get started is to imagine a place where you’d feel comfortable unblending. It’s a matter of visualising a way to give ourselves physical space from our parts. Some people imagine a waiting room, and every time a part pops up, they ask that part to take a seat across from them. Others imagine that they themselves are a great, solid oak tree, and their parts can find shelter on the grass across from them. Do you have any ideas as to what format might serve you?’
I frown. ‘Sophia mentioned… something about a boardroom?’
