At the moment the only way to extract the component instance of a ref is using a deeply nested chain of object properties:
const refInstance = GrandParentComponent.__instance.refs.child.component.__instance;
This can become quite cumbersome when trying to get a nested ref
const nestedRefInstance = GrandParentComponent.__instance.refs.parent.component.__instance.refs.child.component.__instance;
It would be amazing to have an utility function for instance extraction
const refInstance = GrandParentComponent.getRefInstance('child');
const nestedRefInstance = GrandParentComponent.getRefInstance('parent').getRefInstance('child')