Emotional Regulation and Dysregulation through IFS Lens

Today on IFS Talks we're so happy to be welcoming back Chris Burris. He's speaking with us today about IFS and Emotional Regulation. Chris Burris is an IFS senior lead trainer for the IFS Institute. He's been an IFS therapist since 1999 and he’s trained as a marriage and family therapist. Chris uses mind body approaches of therapy in alleviating traumatic stress, depression and anxiety disorders. Chris is currently in private practice in Asheville, North Carolina.

Tisha Shull: Chris, welcome to IFS Talks, and thank you so much for being here with us today.

Chris Burris: Well, thank you. Thanks for having me back. It's good to be with you again.

Aníbal Henriques: Welcome back, Chris. It's our take three for this podcast. Thanks again for your great collaboration and generosity with the Talks. It's been almost one year since we sat and discussed four types of challenging protectors. How have you been those days? Anything you'd like to share?

Chris: Good, good. Yeah, I think most of my training endeavors has been a lot with Black Therapists Rock, working on getting people of color to train. So, there's more access for people of color and people that find himself in sort of marginalized populations have access to therapists that have similar cultures or identities. So that's been a lot of my work the past year and getting some new lead trainers trained from those communities and very happy, proud we have some new lead trainers coming up. And so, that's been a lot of my work the past years, with those populations.

Aníbal: Chris, emotional regulation or emotional self-regulation is one common main goal for so many in therapy and for so many therapy modalities. Is it also a main goal for IFS? Do we want our clients emotionally self-regulated?

Chris: I think it's really important. I think it is, you know, when people come looking for help with depression or anxiety, emotionally they're overloaded and overwhelmed and are looking for help with that. So, I think it's a major part of the therapeutic process, and I think IFS adds some really great contributions and tools that are user-friendly and helpful for people.

Aníbal: Chris, regulation is not a word that you find easily in the IFS vocabulary or in Richard Swartz’ writings. In Dicks’ book, You Are The One You Have Been Waiting For, you can find many expressions for emotion, like emotion connection, emotional intelligence, emotional burdens, but never emotional regulation. Also, in its amazing 2013 article called Moving from Acceptance Towards Transformation with IFS, Dick says, and I am quoting “exiles carry the affect that clients try to regulate through strategies mentioned above like thought suppression, experiential avoidance, and emotional non-acceptance. It is the protectors’ parts that use those strategies and others to control the person's inner environment, internally keeping the person away from the exiles and to control the person's external words so that exiles are never triggered by people or events.” So, for Dick regulation comes from protectors trying to control and suppress exiles. Thus, the term regulation got a bad press once too much linked to the idea of suppression and control.

Chris: I think there's so much in our culture, even kind of the way we're raised. I just recently heard an information about how we're raised from a behavioral standpoint. And so much of the way we're raised from a behavioral standpoint is that things are allowed and not allowed and things that are not allowed get suppressed. And what we encounter in the beginnings of IFS is so much of our system is repressed. And so those other therapeutic tools that you just named, that Dick names, do add more suppression. And I think Dick's very much trying to stay away from anything that suppresses other parts or parts suppressing parts or things not being allowed to emerge and be present in the system. So, I think he's done a wonderful job really trying to steer away from therapeutic approaches that contribute to more repression.

Tisha: Chris, what's your own interest in emotional regulation in IFS? Where does it stem from?

Chris: Yeah, I think, you know, emotional regulation has been sort of a big part of my own journey around, you know, growing up kind of a white male in our society, having access to emotions and names for feeling words, and being able to say what I'm feeling has always been quite a challenge. And so, having emotional vocabulary to be able to describe what I'm feeling, it's also really important in an intimate connection with others, to be able to say how we're feeling. And so, my own journey has been kind of learning my feelings, being able to have words for my feelings, express those in moments of conflict. So that's been a very important part of my own journey and my own part of being in intimate relationships with others, is being able to name what I'm feeling other than, you know, angry or pissed off or, you know, or done, finished, so I need a bigger vocabulary to be able to describe it. You know, we are feeling beings, so not having a language for it has been a major challenge. It's not something men tend to sit around and talk about their feelings with one another very much. So, that's been part of my journey is be able to name what I'm feeling clearly, and it helps with being able to regulate my system in a non-repressive or suppressive way, but in a way of inquiring.  When people learn IFS and try to practice IFS what they tend to do, so if I have an emotion come up or have something that's activating in my system and the first thing I say to myself is “is that a part? Or do I have a part?” That can engage a mental, figuring it out dynamic, you know, where I go into figuring, trying to figure it out. The IFS process really isn't a figuring it out process, is an inquiry process where we began with curiosity and then we are informed by our parts, by our system. So, being able to enter into a curious beginning to kind of be informed by our system and I think the reason Dick does a lot around not doing grounding and not doing these other regulatory processes is because it blocks the process of being informed and having our system be able to inform us about what's occurring internally. So, the success of the model was sort of find the part, focus on it and then begin to flesh it out, which means noticing it, paying attention to it. And then notice how we feel towards it. So that inquiry process is a process of having our system inform us about what's occurring internally.

Tisha: How do we notice the difference for ourselves or, you know, when we're with our clients and we have our parts detectors up, how do we tell the difference between figuring it out parts and inquiry?

Chris: Well, I think it's a level of curiosity. I think there's kind of two ways the parts reveal themselves. One is to be able to talk out loud and talking out loud in our stories. Often, we can hear what parts are active. So, the therapist’s listening to the stories of the client, isn't analyzing, they're listening with curiosity for more of a hypothesis about what might be active. Not that we know exactly what it is. It's just a little indicator that there's something active in the system. There's a push, there's a pull, you know, there's an internal conflict between parts. So, we get this, but the parts detecting isn't a figured-out process. It's like a little indicator that says, “hey, if we focus here, we might find out more.” And is so it's a beginning process rather than a knowing process.

Aníbal: Coming back to your need of getting to know your emotions, different parts, carry different energies and different emotions, right? And it looks so important for therapists to notice and name those different energies and emotions coming from such different parts. So, as practitioners and therapists, what do we need to tune up? An emotional detector or radar, do we need emotion knowledge or an emotional wisdom?

Chris: I think we need to have vocabulary. We need to have a language, not only a language of feelings, but a language of mood. And we also need to have a language that describes sensation and a language for needs. And so, how well we're versed in the language of emotions, moods, needs and sensations, so that we can reflect back something that may resemble a little bit of what the client is feeling so that it gives them a little indicator and a little support so that they can go inside to explore more around that. You know, so for example, anxiety is a mood that has the emotion of fear and also has a quite a bit of thoughts connected to it, you know, a story about what might happen or a story about what someone may do or may not do, so the story plus the fear, the combination of that creates that mood of anxiety. So, being able to have that vocabulary is really important. So, we can begin to reflect back a little bit of where to start with the inquiry process.

Tisha: It sounds like that would come out of really spending time getting to know each part or a particular part where you really take the time to see all the different facets of it.

Chris: Yeah.

Tisha: Or feel, or sense or describe.

Chris: Yeah. I think that knowing our own system is really important. When I was studying, you know, I studied a lot of Rogerian psychotherapy and what they would have us do in the early days is we would watch soap operas, you know, and try to name, get a sense of naming their feelings. So, I was sort of sit with soap operas with my big feeling sheet trying to kind of name the feeling that was going on, but oftentimes it's like five or six different feelings all occurring all at once. You know? So, any given scenario, you may have multiple feelings going on all at once. So, I think it's impossible to name exactly what people are feeling, but we can get a little hint about it and some feeling words that begin to give language to it. If we can't name it, then it becomes very unidentified and it creates a lot of uncertainty. And uncertainty is another big thing that people tend to feel anxious about, is a fear of the unknown or fear of the uncertainty, not being able to name what I'm feeling, then crates anxiety on top of that, that feeling that's occurring.

Aníbal: Chris, I've been checking on Dick’s writings and I could see that the term self-regulation only appears in Dick's 2021 last book, No Bad Parts, and just to introduce an old concept from cybernetics. And the term affect regulation finally appears on the 2020 Internal Family Fystems Therapy Second edition when Dick and Martha say, “because any part can control the level at which it blends with the Self, we are able to work with very delicate inner systems, largely without having to use the grounding techniques and the affect regulation skills that are prevalent feature of most trauma therapies.” So, Dick and Martha are saying that the exiles can regulate themselves under certain circumstances without the oppressive work of managers or the distractive work of firefighters. Do you want to comment on this?

Chris: Yeah, I think that's a big hallmark of what Dick is trying to big communicating for quite some time. So, regulation really comes into play when parts are listened to and heard. So, coming into relationship to the part and being able to listen to it and have it feel heard and not alone, the part naturally begins to, can actually begin to regulate. So, if it doesn't feel like anyone's there, if it's stuck in a trauma scenario, if it doesn't think anyone's coming and there's no one, no way to get listened to, then obviously the part's going to get loud in some way, it could get loud somatically or even through his voice or emotion. So, coming into relationship to the part, that's the process of regulating, is coming into a relationship to the part. Once we enter into a relationship to the part, then we can reassure it that we're not here to get rid of it, or you know, that we're here to help it, that we can listen to it. And then we can ask it to engage in a way that is supportive or easier for the person to be in relationship to it. So that's a natural process of parts regulating is through coming into relationship to them. Sometimes we do that with direct access by the therapist himself coming into a relationship to the part, or we help the clients’ Self come into relationship to it. So, if we don't, if we do sort of lots of other grounding and other certain techniques, what Dick says is we block that process of coming into relationship to the part. And then we enact a form of repression all over again.

Aníbal: Still, we need to say that our clients have permission to dysregulate or be dysregulated in our consulting rooms. Right?

Chris: Well, and I think this is where the concept of blending and unblending gets confusing for folks. So, oftentimes people prescribe unblending as a form of regulation, that if a client is blended and I need to help them unblend, so they would regulate, you know. And that actually sort of becomes another form of repression. A client being blended isn't problematic, right? I say blending is a really up close and personal communication that you're getting with a client. So, I don't start my, and I think a lot of therapists take away when they take a level one training, because we do start with a meditation, that they need to start a meditation at the beginning of their session to have a client be in session. But what happens is you take that live material and you kind of repress it in a way, you know, and we want that live material. We want some anxiety to be present to work with it. So, there are times that it may be beneficial to do a little meditation or do a little inquiry or settling that can be helpful, but we don't want to lose that live material. So, blending is a very helpful process to inquiry, and we don't have to unblend in order to start an inquiry process, we actually ask them to blend to start the inquiry process.

Aníbal: Yeah, beautiful.

Tisha: I really appreciate that take. It's really important to really experience the part as it is in the moment. That's the way to get the best...

Chris: Yeah. I think the thing therapists have to ask is “Am I trying to unblend this client because them being blended is uncomfortable for me, you know, to my parts. So, oftentimes we'll... [inaudible] I need you to unblend so I can settle, you know, and that's not... We want to be able to settle as therapists, we want to be able to be in our Self’s energy and be with the person while they're blended.

Aníbal: Chris, what would you say that IFS really can add to the concept and the depth of emotional regulation?

Chris: Well, I think the inquiry, so I can serve you an example. A couple of days ago, I had an event that was kind of disturbing to my system. All I could really identify in the beginning was I felt vulnerable, I felt uncertain, you know, and I felt a little bit of alone. And so, I get to identify those feelings. And then the next thing I could identify was how was I feeling towards my feelings? You know, so I had a critic that was saying, “you shouldn't be bothered so much about this. This shouldn't bother you so much.” So that was repressing, trying to repress those feelings. So, as I sort of came into relationship more with it, and I began to listen to the parts that were having those feelings, then the system opened up and I could identify the feelings even more, the complexity of the feelings. I could then identify the needs that was also behind those emotions. And then eventually, one morning I woke up and my exiles were present like, “oh, okay, this is why it's a bothersome for you.” You know, because my exiles were also involved in the event. So that process took probably 24 hours for... But the regulation was there because I was able to be in relationship to the feelings and listening to them. But it took a while for it to inform me of the complexity about what I was experiencing, and then once I had that experience, then I could communicate it, you know, and the communication of it brought me closer to the person that I was in conflict with versus disconnecting it. So, it was an inquiry process of being with and listening to my system versus a figuring it out process. I think that can take a while, listening to our feelings, our system, what parts are involved. That can take a little while to work itself out. And I think people are quick to, I can't figure it out, which is often means I don't have language for it. You know, I think that's where this having language for emotions, language for needs, language for sensation, that kind of helps us with that process. We don't go into quite the uncertainty or unknowing quite... And we don't get overwhelmed quite so much.

Tisha: Thank you for illustrating that with that example, that feels really helpful. Does it seem to you, in your experience, that emotional regulation or dysregulation, when we're triggered, is that usually indicative of exiles that are holding burdens or tension or pain?

Chris: I ended up sort of having a list of five ways where it comes up. And so, maybe I'll just go through a few of these. One is there is an overwhelming event, you know. So, one can be... I'm just faced with an overwhelming event... And then it could be...

Tisha: Just straight up in the moment...

Chris: Straight up in the moment. Yeah.

Tisha: Life is hard.

Chris: Life is hard. There's an event that occurs. There can be emotions that occur based on a life challenge, you know. So, a challenge, may be, you know, my car breaks down, going to cost me $2,000 to fix it. You know, I've got 500 in my bank account, you know, and then I don't have next paycheck, you know, so it can be over a life event, that's challenging life event. The other one can be unresolved trauma. So, these life events or life challenges or life events can evoke over past traumas that often surface on top of that. We can also have unresolved grief that begins to surface. And there's different things that may bring that up. Sometimes people watch a movie or see a TV show or have an interaction with someone or an anniversary and grief begins to emerge kind of on its own. The other one that I think we don't talk a lot about in IFS is the emergence of needs. So, when we have needs that are unmet, we naturally have an emotional reaction to that. So that need, when the unmet need isn't met, we have an emotion, a distress that tells us that that need is not being met or that that need is there is not being listened to, you know, so I can get quite antsy if I don't play tennis at least a couple days a week, my system gets very antsy and irritable and it tells me I'm not having enough fun. You know? So, that emotion tells me there's an unmet need. The last one, which we don't talk a lot about IFS is sort of what I call a soul's desire, this feeling of wanting to make a purpose or having a contribution to the world or movement through something that breaks our heart, that we feel like we need to do something about. So, there's kind of a calling and we can have a lot of emotion around that sort of the connection of our Self-energy to something that we're supposed to be engaged with. So, there's several areas where emotion can come up and we need to be able to kind of engage in order to navigate through those different events.

Tisha: With each of these, it's really beautiful because it indicates the purposefulness of the emotion.

Chris: Right. Yeah. So, the purposes of the emotion, you know, so emotions they're not good or bad, they're not right or wrong. They just kind of are. And they're meant to... To have that part navigating the world is through being an emotional being. So, we navigate our world through not only emotions, but also thoughts, you know, so our needs help us navigate the world. So, we need both of those. If we don't have the cognition, it's hard to navigate, but if we don't have the emotional connectiveness, it's hard to navigate. So, we need both for those that navigate our lives.

Aníbal: Still, Chris, some feelings and emotions like anger and rage have a bad press and others like peace or love or joy of a better press.

Chris: Yeah. Well, I think that what anger sort of says is I'm not being loved in a way that I want to be loved, you know? So, the reason it gets a bad press is anger is a poor delivery system for other emotions. You know, so if I feel I'm unloved and I communicate that with anger, that doesn't really beget... That other person doesn't love me more often because I'm angry at them, you know. So, it doesn't really beget what we're... It's not a good delivery system for the feelings, you know, but if I'm in touch with my anger, my anger is often telling me I'm not being loved the way that I feel like I deserve to be loved. You know, I'm not being seen the way I want to be seen, or there's an outrage or injustice that's occurring to someone else, you know, and that's intolerable, that I can't tolerate. So, it's about that I love the other person or I love...You know, I'm loving in a way that is getting blocked or a boundary that's getting violated. So, it's a very helpful alarm system. Is just not a very helpful delivery system?

Tisha: You mentioned the co-regulation with the therapist of like walking through a meditation so that, you know, I, in the therapist role am less uncomfortable. Could you explain why that happens so often and, you know, talk about ways as a therapist to work with that?

Chris: I think, oftentimes, somehow IFS therapists say to themselves, this client does not have enough Self-energy. And as soon as you've said that to yourself as a therapist, you've actually just thrown up a big block to the whole process, you know. And so, somehow the therapist evaluates the client doesn't have enough Self-energy and they say that to themselves. And, then they go about, you know, I'm going to do EMDR, I'm going to do something else other than IFS because this client doesn't have enough therapy or I'm going to do resourcing because they don't have enough Self-energy. So, we don't sort of say that, we don't, you know, on a cloudy day, we don't say there's not enough sun, there's plenty of sun that is being blocked, you know. So, from an IFS standpoint, and Dick communicates this really well, people have plenty of Self-energy, they just have really strong protectors that are blocking that Self-energy and they don't mean to block it, they're just in a survival mode, you know, they're trying to survive. And so, it's a process where Self-energy emerges by parts relaxing. So, maybe getting off a little bit, but I think that's one reason people do the meditation. If someone comes in blended, they say to themselves, you don't have enough Self-energy for me to work with you. I've got to either import something by grounding, you know, oh we’ve got to do a meditation to kind of get your Self-energy present, rather than... If the person is blended, that's a perfect place to start working, you know, and it may be that we work through direct access by listening very closely and reflecting back what we're hearing and holding Self-energy, or we're beginning to enter into the process of how they're relating to what they're experiencing. So, that's why I say blending is a great opportunity. It's an up close and personal experience with a part at that very moment.

Aníbal: So, all parts are welcome can be tough on therapists as well.

Chris: Yeah. It can be tough on some of our parts. What I’ve been working a lot, I've been doing a lot of consultation, is really how many therapists parts are actually engaged in the process of trying to provide therapy. So, a lot of our young parts that learn to care for people, you know, significant others, are often in the room engaged, you know, and get overwhelmed by it. So really having, and I think this is something Dick talks a lot about, is not having your therapist parts, even kind of in the room, definitely not engaged in the therapy process is one of the growing, developmental processes for IFS therapists. The question I sort of ask when I do a lot of journaling is, who has prescribed themselves to this client or prescribed themselves to this event? You know, so the inquiry inside is which parts of me have prescribed themselves to this event or this person, you know. So, they taken it on themselves to “this is my job.” And they've often done that involuntarily. It's an unconscious process.

Aníbal: So, Chris, it looks like through IFS lens there is a variety of quite different ways of regulation. One through managers that either control or suppress exiles and firefighters, traditional seen as control and regulation by other models. Another through firefighters, and those can still be seen by traditional models as dysregulation. Another one through the exile itself, when these exiles feel the trust enough and enough connection that enables the modulation of the emotion. And another one through differentiation, so precious in our model when Self is present to the parts and differentiate itself from the parts. Would you agree with these different qualities of regulation, Chris?

Chris: Well, I think that I would prescribe it more in a suppression, you know, and being in relation too. So, I think the word regulation has become synonymous with repression and I think that's been a lot of what Dicks, you know, hesitancy about even using the word itself because it evokes actually... And helping people see that that is a repressive endeavor has been quite a challenge because so much of our system relies on that and teaches people to ground or to meditate it away, you know. But I think those are putting band-aids on it and we don't get to exiles by grounding or meditating it a way. And I think that's been Dick's campaign is for people to be comfortable getting to those vulnerable parts of themselves.

Aníbal: So, Chris, does Self regulate? We have the expression self-regulation meaning we should regulate ourselves, but does Self regulate as well, or does Self lead?

Chris: I think Self connects and comes into relationship with, and it saps the parts. So, in that process of connection and there's... You know, if I'm really, really upset and I can connect with another person that would just listen to me, you know, or sit with me, then my system will naturally become calmer. But that's a process. So, in that sense, the Self of the other person is helping my system regulate and regulation meaning, I use the word meaning sort of coming to a natural state, you know, that our system naturally wants to come into more harmonious state. Sort of a natural motivation to that, we don't have to make that happen or do that to somebody that the system naturally wants to do that, you know, but it does that through being seen and heard and valued, and that can happen either with someone else or it can happen in how we see, hear and value our own systems. So that question, how am I feeling towards my part right now is a real key to the process of the system beginning to come to a natural state of regulation.

Aníbal: Can you say a little bit about the role of shame around regulation?

Chris: You know, I think shame feels life-threatening because what goes with shame is this feeling that I'm discardable, or I'm irrelevant, or I don't belong. And those evoke really a life-threatening response, a lot of anxiety can be about the feeling of shame merging in our system or something occurring is going to evoke shame in our system. So, it's quite overwhelming. It also tends to cause us to isolate from other people. So that feeling of loneliness or being alone, in addition to that I'm unlovable or, you know, or rejectable is majorly distressing to our system. Shame is often a component of trauma. So, trauma has two components, not only the bad thing that happened, but also the feeling of being alone, as well as that somehow, I deserve this or that somehow was my fault causing this. So, our own critics, I do a lot of work with critics, run a critic camp for people who have graduated from level one trainings, but a lot of our own critics evoke that shame or keep it stoked, you know, or closely active, alive in our system. So, I think it's one of the most difficult emotions and feelings to navigate. It also is the thing that's sort of bonded to our exiles in their trauma and the burdens their caring.

Aníbal: Chris, I guess, contracting and negotiate workable goals with IFS is one of your specialties. And usually managers push clients into therapy for regulation or controlling or eliminate other parts, dysregulated ones, usually firefighters or even exiles. How do we manage contracting with those managers?

Chris: Well, the thing I teach a lot is when people come into therapy, I'm curious, how are they relating to their system? You know, so what is their way of relating to themselves? And, largely what we have is people relating in repressive ways. You know, so I don't like this part, I want to get rid of this part, I want this to go away, I want to get rid of my anxiety, I want to get rid of my anger. Those are ways people are relating to themselves and what we see, you know, is what we resist persists. So that beginning contract is, would you allow me to help you learn to relate differently to your feelings and emotions? You know, what if we related in a way that we could listen to them and hear more about what they're trying to say or what they're trying to communicate with you and what your needs are. How about if I could help you to listen to your emotions or feelings in a way that helps them feel more understood and help your system feel more understood? So, that's a workable contract, which is basically the inquiry process, you know, find, focus, feel towards and befriend. So, that relating in a bit of a compassionate or curious way is the befriending process that we're kind of helping people enter into. So, help people relating to themselves isn’t something initially people come in knowing about, that part of my anxiety is also how I'm relating to my fear. You know, if I'm relating to my fear in repressive ways, then I'm buzzing with anxiety because I'm repressing my fear.

Tisha: Chris, you've shared so much of your wisdom about emotional regulation. Are there one or two points that you'd really like to get across clearly for listeners to take away from this podcast and from all that you've learned?

Chris: Well, I think what I'd like for people to come away with is the inquiry process can take quite a bit of sitting with ourselves, and with amount of distractions and I'm guilty of playing on Facebook and video games, they’re my own distractions. We don't really have the patience to sit with ourselves for a while. You know, I've sat in meditation for a week before I really could hear what the anxiety was underneath it. So, I'd like for people, I'd like to encourage people to have patience with themselves, to listen with the parts, you know, and to ask themselves, how am I feeling towards it? And not to say that we have to do it alone, we can do it with other people as well, you know, being with, sitting with other people and trading that space. So, to normalize the... I figure if it takes me 24 hours to kind of come to some understanding with listening to my system. And that's what a lot of IFS practice, you know, a lot of IFS therapy... That's kind of a normal process is to be with and listen to. And sometimes the parts that are really, really hurting, you know, all I can do is kind of say, I'm here. I'm with you. You're not by yourself. I'm here with you. And in that sense, there's a little bit of comfort that comes, there's a little reprieve that comes or a little breath. They can breathe. People can breathe a little easier, you know. So, if we rush in to try to fix or figure it out, it just makes the system more stagnant or compounded or locked up in a way. So, I mainly just encourage people to have time to listen to themselves and, you know, to trade that for each other, be able to listen to each other and let your system kind of inform you. One of the things I teach a lot is mapping, so that we can sort of create representations of what we're noticing inside. And then that it's not so much a figuring it out process, but a process of being revealed

Aníbal: Beautiful.

Chris: Also, it helps me, I have different maps, you know, the needs inventory that nonviolent communication has is an excellent tool. I also teach the sort of the beginning inquiry around emotions. I think Brene Brown’s new book Atlas of the Heart on the research on emotions, wonderful HBO series. She just described despair, agony in a way that totally makes sense to me, I'm like, okay, I've been there before. Like, I didn't have a word for that. And so, I think those are really, really wonderful resources. A lot of what she talks about in terms of needing a language, you know, in her research on that. I think those are really great resources for folks and, you know, turns towards people with emotions. Really important things to keep in mind as we're working with our system. And we can't heal ourselves. You know, we can definitely get a lot of insight and kind of comfort ourselves, but we do need support in the healing process.

Aníbal: Yes, beautiful. Chris, thank you, thank you so much again for this amazing time together. I'm going now to take some time for myself and maybe dysregulate for a while.

Chris: Yeah. Sometimes I get on my motorcycle to dysregulate for a little while. You know, it feels kind of good. And my firefighters like it.

Aníbal: It was a joy to be here with you and Tisha. And I hope that we can keep meeting and sharing this model, your work, our work, and our lives. Thank you so much.

Chris: Great. Thanks for having me.

Tisha: Thank you, Chris. Thanks for being here.