By Mona Barbera, Ph.D., Internal Family Systems Therapy Topic Expert Contributor

Click here to contact Mona and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

If you are in a multicultural marriage, you know how hard communication can be. Whether it’s about:

• in-laws – how much influence and involvement they have
• privacy – how many people are in your house on a daily basis or at special gatherings
• women’s roles
• conflict – hidden or overt ways of dealing with it
• being indirect/understated vs. being direct and expressive with requests, complaints
• accommodation to others vs. competition with them
• authority – who has it and who has to follow it
• showing affection/closeness – how much you need or show
• the individual’s needs and rights vs. the family/community
• being misunderstood or misunderstanding languages or gestures
• feeling neglected/feeling pressured
• male vs. female roles
• lack of knowledge/judgment of each other’s music, language, or culture
• loneliness/loss when you are living in the other person’s country

Multicultural relationships can be a great, rewarding adventure. Maybe you are the adventurous type, and you love contact with another culture. Or maybe you were surprised when you found yourself committed to someone from another culture. Love happens!

Internal Family Systems couples therapy can help you with your multicultural couples issues.

But here’s the catch: you need to commit to doing what’s within YOUR OWN control to make the situation better. Who is within your control? Not your mate – only you.

Are you willing to focus on your own participation? Are you ready to shift from 50% responsibility to 100% responsibility? Then read on…

But first, here are a few basic IFS terms to help you understand the model.

Your natural state is calm, connected, courageous, clear, curious, compassionate, creative, and confident. In IFS that is called Self energy. You never lose it. It’s always available to you, no matter whom you are or what happened to you in life.

Often, when we are growing up, our families or cultures judge something about us – maybe we are too lively or they think we aren’t smart enough. And sometimes our families, even though they usually try their best to love us, hurt us in some way. They might not give us all the attention we need, or siblings might be very competitive, or people might get very angry and frustrated with us. These hurt feelings are often too intense to deal with, so we wall them off. We end up thinking we don’t feel judged, hurt, or neglected because we push these feelings so far away. We are usually afraid of them, because when they do get through to us, they are often very intense. We sure don’t want to feel consumed by loneliness, hurt, anger or depression – no one would like us! In IFS, these hidden hurt feelings are called Exiles.

As we grow up, we develop habitual patterns so that we won’t be hurt. If people try to control us, maybe we will try to control them first, or we’ll just go along because it isn’t worth it to try and fight.

If we felt lonely, maybe we’ll just convince ourselves we really don’t’need people.

These habitual ways of keeping ourselves safe are called Managers in IFS. They are busy, busy, busy, all day long, trying to keep us safe. For more information see “Internal Family Systems,” by Richard Schwartz, or “Bring Yourself to Love,” by Mona Barbera.

Despite our Managers’ best efforts to keep us safe, sometimes people (especially our spouses!) get through our protective perimeter and hurt us. Then we need to do something fast to feel safe again. Maybe get angry, go off in a huff, give up, or retreat to a safe distance. IFS calls these quick reactions Firefighters, because they race out to save people from danger, just like real firefighters.

Most of the problems in couple relationships come from Firefighter reactions. We are innocently going about our day, and all of a sudden our mates do something that makes us feel intensely unloved or disrespected.

But if your reaction is intense, it’s your own. I know, the last thing on your mind is your own unworthiness, fear, or loss of control. You are totally focused on the wrongdoing of your mate.

But if you feel intensely hurt, demeaned, or sad, it’s definitely your own feeling. Your mate might have sprinkled a little salt on a wound, but that wound was there before your mate came into your life.

But remember, we’ve been pushing our intense hurt away since childhood – we turned them into Exiles, and made ourselves believe we didn’t really feel so bad. That was a good thing – it was much easier to go to school and make friends if we weren’t sad all the time.

Since our Exiles are so far away from awareness, we don’t know that we already feel hurt, demeaned or disrespected.

We think our mates caused it!

Firefighters to the rescue! We attack, punish, lecture, demean, control, or give in to our mates in an effort to make the hurt stop.

Now let’s get specific about multicultural relationships.

Your natural state is calm, connected, courageous, clear, curious, compassionate, creative, and confident – Self energy.

So if your mate from a different country or a different culture misunderstands you, you have the ability to stay present and communicate well.

But if the way you felt hurt matches your Exiles – you will have a Firefighter reaction, and their will no chance of a calm, creative solution. Firefighters don’t care about solutions – they don’t even care about your mate. They just want the pain to stop. And they think your mate caused it.

Let’s take the example of in-law involvement. Let’s say your partner’s culture includes in-laws more than yours does. At first when they stopped by without calling, when they gave opinions, when they assumed they would come with you on trips – it was fine. Then you started to get angry.

But you forgot that when you grew up, your older brothers were very controlling. They borrowed what they wanted. They sat on you if you didn’t go along. You were smaller so you couldn’t do anything.

You made yourself a little clubhouse where you could get away from it all. It was so small only one person could get in! That’s all you wanted. It was safer to be alone. You learned to occupy yourself alone. You didn’t need people.

Now with all these nice in-laws around all the time, it feels bad. You don’t know why – because you succeeded pushing those awful, out of control, scared feelings from your brothers away. They are Exiles – you don’t even know they exist anymore.

Here’s the secret: If you can own those intense feelings as your own, you will find out they are from the past. When you find your Exiles and acknowledge how bad they feel, they will relax.

Then you will have all the creativity, love, clarity, and courage you need to talk to your mate about the involvement of his or her in-laws. You’ll be able to stay calm when your mate gets defensive at first. You’ll be able to be clear when your mate doesn’t understand. Most important, you’ll be able to stay connected instead ofdistancing or getting angry.

©Copyright 2009 by Mona Barbera, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Mona Barbera, Ph.D. and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile