“It’s immoral, unthinkable, intolerable. I can’t continue a friendship with someone like that.”
Sam and Chris* had weathered disagreements over the course of their decade-long friendship. But Chris’s decision to not join their broader friendship group at a protest caused a rupture that, in Sam’s eyes, was irreparable.
Disagreements between friends are as old as friendship itself. But the frequency and ferocity of discord seem to have grown exponentially amid current geopolitical crises and the avalanche of social stressors. The weight of an increasingly fractured world is pressing on many individuals and, by extension, friendships. Nerves are frayed, tensions are high. Our threshold to withstand differences or to work through these in a constructive manner seems at a low ebb.
Sam’s resolute stance on the protest was not surprising, given his strong interest in politics. Still, thoughts of abruptly ending the friendship with Chris seemed out of character. The issue of the protest seemed so dominant that it was difficult for Sam to consider other aspects of Chris and their friendship. Suggestions from other friends to “let it go” or to “agree to disagree” only served to compound Sam’s frustration.
I wondered if “parts work” might be helpful in clarifying Sam’s thoughts and feelings about the friendship. This therapy approach, based on internal family systems, recognises the complexity of the human psyche by acknowledging the separate but interconnected “parts” of the self.
All individuals contain multitudes; some aspects of the self are congruent and support each other, but others are invariably in conflict and at times may seem irreconcilable. The discomfort arising from this can propel us to seek to cut off a part of ourselves. Usually applied to internal conflict within individuals, the model is also helpful in thinking about interpersonal conflict. For Sam, discomfort and incongruence motivated him to consider cutting off a friendship, rather than parts of the self.
But before I had a chance to introduce the concept of parts work, Sam put to me the same question vexing his friendship with Chris: would I be attending the protest? It was a potential juncture in our therapeutic relationship, similar to the juncture threatening Sam and Chris’s friendship.
This interaction demonstrates that the therapy room is a microcosm of the patient’s broader world; events here mirror the patient’s external world and, perhaps more importantly, can cause change in the patient’s external world.
I wondered: did the continuation of our therapeutic relationship hinge on my protest plans? Might Sam be contemplating walking out on me, too?
I leaned into the discomfort, knowing this was a chance to explore Sam’s thoughts and feelings about friendship in the safe confines of our therapeutic relationship.
“What if I wasn’t planning on attending the protest?”
I treated Sam’s question as hypothetical. While it can sometimes be helpful for therapists to communicate their political views with patients, entering into a discussion about politics with Sam would not have aided the therapeutic focus on disagreements and friendship dynamics.
Sam said he would be shocked, angry, disappointed. He felt he knew me and could anticipate my stance on political and social issues. He would find it hard to continue our work together, such were his strong feelings about the issue.
We agreed that this sounded similar to his position on the friendship with Chris. Did a difference of opinion on this issue nullify or void the entire friendship? Was there a way to sit with differences while also appreciating other parts of their friendship? Sam listed a dozen or more of Chris’s attributes, representing parts of their friend and their friendship that Sam appreciated and found more challenging. Sam also reflected on his own parts, recognising the internal conflict around valuing friendship while being true to his own principles and values. While we’d not talked about the protest directly, there had been a softening around the topic.
Over time, parts work provided an opportunity to explore Sam’s thoughts and feelings about his friendship with Chris, but it was by no means a panacea. He remained ambivalent about the friendship and his thoughts about the protest remained strong. But the structure of parts work tempered Sam’s initial impulse around discarding the friendship, instead allowing time and space for different aspects to be considered.
Viewing ourselves and others in this way discourages rigid thinking, promoting curiosity over judgment. For Sam, this was infinitely more interesting and useful than biting his tongue or agreeing to disagree.
* Sam and Chris are fictitious amalgams to exemplify similar cases
• Dr Bianca Denny is a clinical psychologist based in Melbourne. She is the author of Talk To Me: Lessons from Patients and their Therapist
