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Why we torture ourselves with the desire to be perfect…

Oct 24, 2019 by adminner

One of the most bewildering facets of human life that i have encountered is that people regularly construct a virtual reality mask, which is designed to be the exact opposite of how they really feel about themselves – my experience is that this is based on very early and uinversal tendencies in he human infant… Long ago I lived in upstate New York at the Phoenicia Pathwork centre, where I came across these astonishingly incisive accounts of how all this comes about (from pathwork lecture 58). The pathwork lectures go on to state that the infant in each one of us, reacting to insecuity and unhappiness, constructs a maks of perfection, which is the exact opposite of how we really fear we are, based on the following tendencies. Needless to say without recognising these tendencies in ourselves, we cannot escape the treadmill they create.
” Happiness in the wrong concept is expressed in the following way: “Only if I can have what I want, the way I want it, and when I want it, can I have happiness. I will be unhappy with any way other than this.” Included in this statement is the demand for absolute approval, admiration, and love by everybody. The moment anyone seems to fail to meet this requirement, the person’s world crumbles. Happiness becomes an impossibility, not just for the time being, but forever after. This, of course, is never the intellectual conviction of an adult human being, but emotionally it holds true; for when everything seems hopeless, the mood becomes desperate.
The undeveloped being feels in terms of black and white. It knows no in-between. Either there is happiness or there is unhappiness. If things happen in accordance with its wishes, the world is bright. But if the tiniest little thing goes against its will, the world looks black.
When the infant is hungry but for a few minutes, these minutes are eternity, not only because it lacks a time concept, but also because the infant does not know that the period of hunger will be over in a very short time. So the baby is in absolute despair, which you can observe in a crying child. The issue over which the baby cries seems in no way related to its anger, fury, and unhappiness. This part of the personality, freely expressed in infancy, remains hidden in the psyche of the adult and continues to produce similar reactions. Only the reasons change, and the outer display becomes modified or even completely covered by rational and reasonable behavior. But this in no way proves that the inner reaction has truly been eliminated or that the person has come to terms with it in a process of inner maturing and growth.
The infant realizes very early that the kind of happiness it wants is unattainable. The child feels dependent on a cruel world which denies it what it thinks it needs and could have if the world were less cruel.
If you think it through logically, you will find that the primitive and distorted concept of happiness actually amounts to a desire for omnipotent rulership, for unquestioned obedience from the surrounding world, for a special, elevated position above all other beings — since others are expected to fulfill what the person desires. When this wish cannot be gratified — and it never can — the frustration becomes absolute.
It is impossible, of course, for any human being to remember these early emotions, for you have no memory of your first few years. That these primitive reactions continue to exist without exception in all human beings is a fact, and you can find these emotions by various ways in the work you are doing on this path. You can find them by observing past and present reactions, by analyzing them from the point of view of the inner infant. First, discover where the infant still exists in you with its desires, feelings, and reactions, and focus your attention on this particular aspect of your personality. You will then have reached a point from where you can start to outgrow the unrealistic and unrealizable concept of happiness and build the proper, mature, realistic, and realizable concept. This will be infinitely more gratifying. Until you have experienced the infant in you, you cannot understand certain inner conflicts as being the effect of the chain reaction this fundamental distorted concept sets off.
The more the child grows and learns to live in this world, the more it realizes that the omnipotent rulership it wishes is not only denied but is also frowned upon. So it learns to hide this desire until the hiding has progressed so far that the growing person himself is no longer aware of it. Two basic reactions follow. One is: “Perhaps if I become perfect, as the world around me asks me to be, I will get so much approval that through it I can attain my goal.” You then start to strive for such perfection. Needless to say, my friends, although we are all in agreement that all beings should strive for perfection, this kind of striving is wrong. It is wrong because of the motive. Here you do not strive for perfection in order to love better and give more. You do not strive for the sake of perfection itself, but seek a selfish end. And it is wrong further because you want to reach the goal of perfection right away, since happiness through omnipotent rulership is desired at once. To reach immediate perfection is, of course, utterly impossible. It forfeits the healthy acceptance of one’s own inadequacies, which enables the personality to learn healthy humility and accept being no better than the rest of humankind.
The frustration becomes a double one; the first desire — omnipotent rulership in order to be happy — is not realized, neither is the second one, that of attaining perfection in order to obtain the first desire. This, in turn, causes acute feelings of inadequacy and inferiority, of regret and guilt. For the child does not yet know that no one is capable of attaining such perfection. It thinks itself unique in having failed and has to hide this shameful fact. Even when the person has grown up and consciously knows better, this reaction, not having been aired, continues to live locked in the soul. In the unconscious of the personality, the argument goes on: “If I were perfect, I would have what I want. Since I am not perfect, I am worth nothing.” The second conscience, as I once termed it, continues whipping and whipping you, holding up the unrealizable goal, so that each failure causes additional despair and guilt, increasing the feelings of inferiority and inadequacy.”

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Healing – by not going somewhere else!

Oct 24, 2019 by adminner

Therapy can take us on a relentless journey – if we really want to glimpse how we can heal ourselves and others, we are forced to put our trust in the depths of our own heart – that it contains potentials we have not begun to dream of – but we cannot open this up by trying to get somewhere else.
The following is quoted by Joan Tollifson (herself an amazingly courageous explorer of our ineffable birthright who was forced to confront Life without a right hand) – from Joko Beck:

Joko said: “Practice is not about having nice feelings, happy feelings. It’s not about changing, or getting somewhere. That in itself is the basic fallacy. But observing this desire begins to clarify it. Read More

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IFS – covering up negative emotions doesn’t work (From Psychology Today)

Oct 24, 2019 by adminner

An article from Psychology Today endorsing the IFS approach to healing negative emotions:
“Covering Up Negative Emotions Doesn’t Work. So What Does?
It’s crucial to grasp what your unwanted emotions protect you from. Enter IFS.

Common wisdom advises you to avoid, or try to let go of, troubling feelings. That way they won’t overwhelm your coping abilities. And these feelings include anxiety and panic, deep discouragement and hopelessness, rage, guilt and shame. It’s like being told to eliminate unhealthy foods from your diet so they won’t make you sick. On the surface, it certainly makes sense to get rid of what’s not in your best interests. For generally speaking, your better judgment isn’t available if it’s bulldozed by overwrought impulses and emotions.
However (and similar to much self-help advice), such a straightforward recommendation doesn’t, and probably can’t, explain how to put such self-defeating feelings and unruly inclinations to rest: To overthrow them in a way that, at the earliest opportunity, they won’t return—and maybe with special vengeance to punish you for trying to silence or squelch them in the first place.
·       Although, doubtless, it’s wise not to permit your feelings to dictate your behavior (see my earlier “What’s “Emotional Reasoning”—And Why Is It Such a Problem?”), vanquishing precariously inflated emotions is far easier said than done.
·       Here’s why:
·       Your emotions basically come from child parts of yourself. And this isn’t to imply that as an adult you lack feelings, but to emphasize that your present-day emotions arise from those more impulsive, and less developed parts of your personality. These more primal aspects of your being haven’t yet had the experience to recognize the possibly high costs of emotionally driven behavior. It’s only after a young child has said or done something they were impulsively motivated to do that they begin to appreciate its consequences. And unless their parents have amply warned them beforehand, they couldn’t, realistically, have predicted its results.
·       And doubtless, this fact accounts for why, on the circuitous route to adulthood, children are prone to make so many mistakes. It also explains why a child’s judgment will improve, or become more refined, with age. For the increasingly circumspect evaluation of experience is a key component of maturation.
·       Call it “experiential learning,” and it’s crucial in understanding how children get socialized. More than any formal education, your personal and interpersonal reality teaches you about the value of cooperation and compromise. Which is why, typically, as you move through various stages of growth, you become ever more rational.
·       As an adult, then, your behavior is more or less governed by logic, reason, and objectivity. Your childhood impulses and emotions are now subordinate to your rational faculties. Except, that is, when you’re beset with strong feelings and begin to engage in so-called “emotional reasoning.” This is when you’re apt to lose your (rational) way. For essentially you’ve “regressed” back to childhood. And that’s where feelings reign supreme, creating the serious threat that any decision you make will be “under the influence of”—and likely, distorted by—your now dominant feelings.
·       Seen in this adult/child context, the common recommendation is to revise (on the fly, as it were) your too-emotional inner dialogue and make it more rational—to somehow prompt your adult self to return to “executive control” of your being. And, ideally, that would seem to be the best solution.
But it’s not.
Why? Because such guidance glibly assumes that it shouldn’t be that difficult to hit an internal reset button and restart communication between your rational self and your predominantly emotional self. But all too frequently this advice simply isn’t do-able—at least not when you’re so overcome with emotion that you really can’t think straight.
·       If in the moment your emotions have already hijacked your more levelheaded self, how do you recover, and put back in charge, this adult part of your being? How can your more logical self-talk return to ascendance when your disruptive child self is beginning to reign supreme and frantically sabotaging it? Can powerful emotions—whether linked to marked anxiety, despair, or rage—be muffled purely through an act of will?
·       Consider trying to talk rationally to a three-year-old in the midst of a temper tantrum—as though even in such a highly charged feeling state that youngster might still be swayed by adult reason. In any particular situation, endeavoring to stifle powerful emotions (however irrational they may be) through such an act of determination isn’t likely to be successful. Similarly, rational self-talk—if it can be “summoned” at all—is hardly likely to quell a voice from deep within screaming that your very survival is under siege. You adult self might not believe that any such threat exists, but your child self may be equally convinced that it most certainly does.
·       To offer but one example, as the adult you are today, you may conclude, and quite rationally, that what your spouse has just requested of you is unfair. And so it’s only fitting to share your frustration with them. Yet such a course of action might make the child inside you start quivering with anxiety. For that still-living fragment within you (dormant but mobilizable) continues to be run by programming rooted in your parents’ highly punitive reactions whenever you assertively expressed negative feelings toward them. Consequently, the present-day pounding of your heart signals you to stop in your verbal tracks.
In such a regressed state, you’re emotionally convinced that being candid is too hazardous to your relationship, that (ironically) it risks compromising your all-important, though perhaps somewhat tenuous, bond with your parents. It can safely be assumed here that this scared child part of you is frozen in childhood and has never been integrated into your adult self. Which means it can’t help but regard your partner literally as a composite of your parents—and so will create in you physical symptoms of anxiety to ward off the possibility of (supposedly dangerous) self-assertion.
So, by struggling to ignore, belittle, or dismiss the “feeling viewpoint” of your inner child—vs. seeking first to empathize, understand, and validate where it’s coming from—this anachronistic part of you, however wrongheaded, will likely prevail. And may even become more intense— throwing you into an irresolvable quandary. That is, if you can’t listen compassionately to the emotional reasoning of your child self, it’s likely to sound an even louder alarm— whether that’s by turning your anxiety into panic, your discouragement into despair, or your frustration into inflamed, out-of-control rage.
·       Given that antiquated (family or environmental) programming can be so rigid—so robust—so intimately tied to your sense of emotional survival—how rational is it to think that ignoring it, or talking “reasonably” to it, could actually resolve such inner strife? Realistically, how could such hard-line rationality, or resistance, be expected to prompt these so scared or shamed parts of you to acquiesce to what is, well, more judicious?
·       After all, you’re not even listening to these early, wounded parts of you, just lecturing to them (and kids don’t like being lectured to!). Generally speaking, attempting through your self-talk to bypass your frightened, forlorn, humiliated, or infuriated child parts—to continue to abandon them (as they felt abandoned originally), and so leave them out in the cold (as “exiles”)—won’t work.
·       Remember, because of what in your past felt traumatic to these parts, they froze—and, still residing deep within you, remain frozen. So expending your mental energy not to heal them but to keep their pain numbed up through rationalizing with them, is ultimately an exercise in futility. For various challenges you face in the present will inevitably trigger, or reawaken, them. So how can you liberate them from their bondage? And, too, how can you put an end to the enduring burden of these hurt, injured, or damaged parts of you?
My previous post discussed the increasingly popular therapeutic modality of Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS), the remarkable brainchild of Richard Schwartz. This compassion-based model for repairing wounded child parts is, admittedly, fairly complicated. So I’m limited in what I can suggest here regarding precisely how to implement this process for yourself. But I can definitely describe something of its essence, as well as the paramount importance—if you have unresolved disturbances from your past—of implementing this compelling protocol for self-healing.
Obviously, your task must center on finding ways to prompt these wounded child parts (Schwartz’s “exiles”) out of their hiding places, so you can begin to heal them. And that’s best done by befriending them—bearing witness to their suffering and offering them the caring, understanding, and support so sadly missing when they were roused into existence. And the You that can do this is your higher, non-reactive, non-damaged, ego-transcendent Self, which can be (re-)discovered in this restorative process. For when you’ve accessed your True Self, which emanates from your inborn creativity, compassion, and confidence, it can finally begin to interact with your wounded parts and proceed, methodically, to heal them.
But, following the IFS model, it needs to be added that other, protective or defensive, parts of you (Schwartz’s “managers” and “firefighters”) have long been operating to keep these pained and most vulnerable parts of yourself concealed— so that they won’t disrupt your day-to-day functioning by overwhelming you. And whether these parts accomplish their purpose through people-pleasing, procrastination, apathy and numbing out, flying into a rage, or one of innumerable forms of compulsive/addictive behaviors, their overriding function is to safeguard you from having to re-experience past emotional suffering.
These different parts must all be respectfully addressed and eventually induced to step aside before you’ll have full entry to your wounded exiles. However mistaken these self-protective “sub-personalities” of yours may be right now (since, obviously, you’re no longer a child, though they remain so), you yet have to recognize that they mean well and need you to understand this. For while their varied efforts to keep you emotionally safe may frequently have sabotaged you from taking advantages of many opportunities life has presented you, their misguided (though totally innocent) labors on your behalf warrant being appreciated.
And that’s why they deserve to be befriended, too, before you introduce yourself to your exiles. So, in their own voices, let them speak to you about their “appointed” roles. Only then will they be willing to retreat and let the essence of you—your calmer, more resourceful, compassionate Self—take over for them and begin not merely to protect but to heal your long-suffering child parts. For, from deep within, you can never feel really safe and secure in the world, or reach your full human potential, until you’ve convinced these protective parts to allow you to intervene for them and actively engage with the so-vulnerable “inner children” they’ve sought to keep sequestered. (Because actually healing these parts is—by the protectors’ own admission—far beyond their job description.)
Next, it’s time to invite these wounded parts to emerge from their caves and tell you about the heavy emotional burden they’re still carrying. And whatever these afflictions may be, they’ll enable you to better comprehend why your protective parts have regarded it as absolutely imperative that they regularly trigger emotional agitation and negative physical sensations in you to prompt you to act in ways to block this pain from engulfing you. And what you’ll recognize is that, unconsciously confronted with present-day reminders of past emotional crises, your protectors’ intentions have stayed constant: to help prevent you from doing what once had such harmful repercussions for the exiles they’ve labored so hard to keep at bay.
Once reunited with your hurt exiles, you begin the healing process by being there for them, as no one back then ever was. You have these parts tell you, and visually show you, what events led to their feeling so bad about themselves—and probably the world around them as well. And you help them to understand that you’ve now come back for them. That you’re the patient, caring, empathic, and responsive parent they’ve so long yearned for. That you’re able to love and accept them unconditionally. And that you can reassure them about any (perceived) threats to their survival.
And finally—whether or not you were able to demonstrate this earlier (because for so many years your Self-leadership was preempted by your various protector parts)—that you can now manifest the internal resources and resilience you couldn’t in the past. Which is the reason your childhood protective parts felt obliged to take over for you in the first place.
You carry on a dialogue with these different exiled parts, one at a time, until you’ve won their trust. And only when, having removed them from each troubling scene they report to you and managed to get them to perceive it in a less self-damaging way, do you invite them to join you in the present: To become an intrinsic part of your grown-up Self and, if they’re ready, to choose where inside you they’d now like to reside.
That’s when they’ll begin to experience how much better (i.e., less symptom-generating) a “bodyguard” you can be for them. And, now partaking of your courage, comforting, and fully functioning emotional resources, they’ll require less and less defending. No longer do they need to hide, or rather be hidden by, the juvenile parts protecting them since childhood (but only through squashing or stifling them).
Moreover, these “inner children”—finally nurtured by Self—no longer need their protective parts to act in the extreme (and frequently maladaptive) ways they had been. So the Self can now grant these parts a much needed vacation . . . and have them return refreshed and ready to assume more appropriate—and less burdensome—roles.
And that’s the ultimate goal of IFS therapy: to reunite all your different parts and allow the Self to lead the newly blended, harmonious “ensemble” that is you.
© 2017 Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved.
References
Earley, J. (2009). Self-therapy: A step-by-step guide to creating wholeness and healing your inner child using IFS, a new cutting-edge psychotherapy (2nd ed.). Larkspur, CA: Pattern System Books.
Internal Family Systems. The Center for Self Leadership. https://selfleadership.org/ (the official website for IFS)
Murphy, B. About internal family systems therapy: Self-led solutions. (n.d.) http://www.selfledsolutions.com/resources/aboutifs.html
Schwartz, R. C. (1995). Internal family systems therapy. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Schwartz, R. C. (2001). Introduction to the internal family systems model. Oak Park, IL: Trailhead.
Schwartz, R. C. (2008). You are the one you’ve been waiting for: Bringing courageous love to intimate relationships. Oak Park, IL: Trailhead.
Seltzer, L. F. (2017). How and why you compromise your integrity: Internal family systems therapy can free you from self-sabotaging defenses. https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/evolution-the-self/201707/how-and-w…

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‘Psychology Today’ endorses the IFS model – on recovering your integrity

Oct 24, 2019 by adminner

How and Why You Compromise Your Integrity
Internal Family Systems Therapy can free you from self-sabotaging defenses.
Posted Jul 19, 2017

Perhaps the most important thing you possess is your integrity. It’s your word of honor—what makes you honorable. Yet at one time or another, you’ve certainly violated this trustworthy, most “sacred” part of yourself. Why? Whether to yourself or others, what is it that, from deep within, compels you to go back on your word?
The present post will seek to clarify this all-too-common situation. Plus, it will suggest why you shouldn’t be too hard on yourself when this “self-violation” occurs (as in, “What part of me impelled me to do that? Was that really ME?!”). For ideally, such a lapse shouldn’t lead to self-shaming or contempt. Rather, it should signal that it’s time to mobilize your self-compassion.
·       So, to start, have you ever considered that the word integrity intimately relates to the kindred integration? Because if the different parts of yourself—each harboring a voice and agenda of its own—aren’t well-integrated, it may be impossible (across a large variety of situations) to keep your integrity intact.
·       To best understand how your integrity relates to your level of integration, consider how dictionary.com portrays the word: (a) “Adherence to moral and ethical principles . . .” and (b) “The state of being whole, entire, or undiminished.” Note how this second definition, contrasting with yet complementing the first, implies that to be virtuous, honest, and have moral rectitude, you need to be “whole,” which is to say, unified—or, to employ my preferred term, integrated.
·       Moreover, “whole” implies that the various parts that comprise something are balanced and relate to each other concordantly. Viewed in human terms, personal integrity depends, simply enough, on the individual’s being integrated. And the dictionary’s extended definition of that concept amply supports this contention, emphasizing that “combining or coordinating separate elements . . . provide[s] a harmonious, interrelated whole.”
·       I’ll provide an example to explain why, if you’re to be true to yourself and others, you need to get your different parts to collaborate, to work in unison. But first I’d like briefly to say something about Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS).
·       This highly regarded treatment modality, created by Richard Schwartz, Ph.D., in the 80s and increasingly prominent in the therapy world today, posits that, as in families, all individuals are made up of parts. When these parts conflict with one another or are extreme, they’re functioning either to protect the individual from re-experiencing intolerable emotional pain (as Schwartz’s so-called pre-emptive “managers”)—or, if that pain has already been aroused, to “put it out” (Schwartz’s reactive “firefighters”).
·       Sadly, the consequence of all these self-protective parts’ efforts to escape one’s (unrectified) emotional suffering is frequently some form of psychological dysfunction: from mood, anxiety, and personality disorders, to eating abnormalities, topsychophysiological disturbances, to all kinds of compulsive/addictive behaviors.
·       It’s like having an orchestra inside you, whose members aren’t playing as a cohesive, coordinated unit. The effect is hardly anything like melodic music. What’s produced is a bumbling, incoherent cacophony. For the conductor, or orchestra’s “leader”—which Schwartz defines, transcendently and idealistically, as the beyond-ego Self—is absent, missing in action. Continuing with this metaphor, the goal of therapy is to locate the conductor’s whereabouts and free him or her from the various instrumentalists, who have taken over their maestro’s responsibility, so that the whole ensemble can finally make the harmonious music for which it was designed.
Moving beyond this metaphorical description, as regards which other parts the managers and firefighters are protecting against, these are what Schwartz calls the “exiles”—your most vulnerable, deeply wounded parts that have yet to be healed and which both the managers and firefighters have resolved to keep buried.
Why, exactly? Mainly, for fear that the emergence of these exiles could overwhelm the system, with such out-of-control, traumatic feelings as guilt, shame, panic, terror, rage or despair. And just as only the empowering Self can synchronize all one’s internal voices, it’s the Self alone that—once disentangled from the person’s maladaptive, though well-meaning, parts—can both heal the exiles and transform the managers’ and firefighters’ burdensome, misguided, and outdated roles.
Here’s an example (admittedly, somewhat extreme) of how an individual’s protective, non-integrated, parts can make it virtually impossible for a person to uphold their personal integrity:
Say, you were brought up in a home with an alcoholic father who, when inebriated, would routinely rage, throw things, and frighten the entire family; and a codependent mother, totally preoccupied and obsessed with your father’s hazardous drinking. In such a family, neither parent could possibly be there for you—to adequately respond to your thoughts and feelings, needs and desires. Growing up in such conditions might have affected you in various ways—none of them conducive to feeling safe, loved, or secure.
In all likelihood, you would have ended up with many adverse feelings and thoughts about yourself, such as being:
unimportant (because of not feeling recognized; given enough time and attention);
inadequate (because of being frequently criticized);
lonely (because of not feeling understood, or sufficiently bonded to your parents);
powerless (because, however negatively you viewed the situation, you could do nothing to change it);
in danger or unsafe (because your father’s angry flare-ups were unpredictable and your resulting anxiety was simply a way of trying to “prepare” yourself for them);
shameful (because, after all, you “belonged” to this alcoholic family);
worthless (because of feeling ignored; not feeling appreciated or valued);
uncared about (because you couldn’t experience your parents’ being devoted to you); and lastly, if you thought all of the above was grossly unfair to you,
strong, deep-seated (but much-too-dangerous-to-express) distrust and anger.

So, what does all of this have to do with your integrity? Consider that as children none of us can emotionally survive if we’re constantly focused on one (or more) of these so-stressful feeling/belief states. Consequently (and almost instinctively), different parts of our personality change, or adapt, to such ongoing abuse and neglect by taking on various protective roles. Inasmuch as when you’re young, your emotional resources, or resilience, isn’t well developed, you’re left feeling acutely vulnerable, particularly since you can’t help but remain so dependent on your caretakers.
Accordingly, your defenses against emotional pain and suffering need to be as strong as is the hurt you urgently need to escape from. And basically, it’s your defenses, or adapted parts, that end up holding your essence—or Self—captive (which, in turn, was overcome when your vulnerable parts [now exiles], in desperation, “merged” with it).
Obviously, your integrity, your “wholeness,” can come only from your integrated Self. And that Self must harmoniously incorporate—not be sabotaged by—its different parts. Being “centered” in the Self necessitates that all your various parts be led by the Self. As the seat of your consciousness, this very essence of you also constitutes your moral and ethical core.
And it should be added that, to Schwartz, your Self—once revived—naturally displays the qualities of “calmness, curiosity, compassion, connectedness, confidence, creativity, courage, and clarity” (Schwartz’s “8C’s” of Self). And does this amalgam of positive personality characteristics not coalesce to form one’s integrity?
Additionally, your various parts—to supply you with yet another extended list of adjectives (!)—are by nature innocent, spontaneous, humorous, joyful, adventurous, fair-minded, understanding, forgiving, empathic, grateful and loving. But if their natural roles got subverted by an overwhelming need to protect your far more sensitive, scared, or shamed parts, these positive qualities got contaminated (or desecrated). Because of disturbing experiences (generally in your youth), these parts felt forced to take on distorted, constricting roles—which also pretty much detracted from and devalued the healthy dominance, or leadership, of the Self.
That compromised Self, with all its lucidity and wisdom, became “managed” almost out of existence. So you may no longer be at liberty to consistently manifest who you were meant to be. For your Self has in various ways been cast aside by your protectors, and so unable to function fully. In fact, when many people are asked to identify their true Self (i.e., apart from their specific beliefs and behaviors), they frequently draw a blank, sometimes not even sure that they have such a Self (!).
So though the abuse you may have suffered was probably never intended—that is, your caretakers weren’t actually motivated to act harmfully toward you or interfere with your wholesome development—you yet felt compelled to hide aspects of who you were to better “fit in” with them.
Being true to yourself requires that your Self be “whole”—integrated, and with executive control over your subordinate parts (or sub-personalities). But when these parts become extreme and frozen in time, any of your exiled parts threatening to surface propel them into action to take over control of your thoughts and actions. And that’s what, periodically, sabotages your personal integrity. For at this point you can’t come from Self, but only from protective parts that (never really having grown up themselves) still feel compelled to react, supposedly to safeguard your “inner child’s” fragility.
In fact, as adults, all your overreactions (and we can all overreact at times) are so because you’re not merely reacting to some in-the-moment provocation but also to much older threats the present situation is reminding you of—and which still carry significant emotional charge. This is, after all, what it means to be “triggered.” In such instances, your best judgment—which belongs to your non-reactive Self (vs. your highly reactive parts)—isn’t available. For when these parts intercede, your emotional equilibrium is undermined . . . as is your integrity.
Can you relate to this expression (taken from Richard Schwartz’s Introduction to the Internal Family Systems Model, 2001): “I didn’t want to do it, but I couldn’t stop myself.” ? For such a bemused, disappointed declaration encapsulates everything I’ve been discussing.
Here are two instances of your violating your integrity because your still juvenile protective parts—which assume they’re acting in your best interests—actually act counter to it:
You’re about to embark on an important home project, which you promised yourself and your family you’d undertake. But then old fears of failure, associated with parental shaming and rejection, kick in. At which point one of your protective parts intervenes and compels you to procrastinate, make excuses for yourself, avoid committing yourself to it. Such an “intervention” prevents the particular exile involved from having to reexperience any quivering anxiety or trepidation. But it ends up with your feeling that much worse about yourself and sacrificing more of your family’s trust.
Your partner offers you a practical suggestion about something you’re working on and you suddenly go ballistic on her, telling her to mind her own business, that she’s always trying to control you, and then harshly criticizing her for whatever you can think of. What’s happening here is that her (innocent) suggestion, however obliquely, reminded you of how your parent(s) regularly got on your case whenever you made a mistake, making you feel you weren’t good enough, that you were defective; unlovable. So your externalizing old feelings of inadequacy or unacceptability (i.e., unreasonably projecting them onto her) protects a scorned exile part from feeling its original humiliation and sense of worthlessness.
Moreover, your present-day explosion can be seen as “acting out” whatever ancient, undischarged rage you once harbored toward your parents by redirecting it toward your partner. But afterwards, you may regretfully realize how much you’ve hurt your spouse, how much additional distance you’ve now put between the two of you, and how exaggerated your reaction was in the first place. And you probably won’t even understand why in the moment you acted so “out of character” and couldn’t help but go nuclear on her. Here again, one of your protective parts has taken over, seeking to spare you from intolerable emotions just beginning to emerge from an exile—but with considerable collateral damage.
I could provide numerous other examples, especially as relates to intimacy barriers and to various compulsive/addictive behaviors—almost all of which have immediate analgesic, consciousness-altering effects. But by now you can probably grasp how your intrusive, no-longer-appropriate “protectors” interfere with both your personal, and interpersonal, welfare.
For these are the times when your defensive emotions and impulses supersede, or overrule, your Self. And that’s when your thoughts and actions betray your integrity. For these bothersome intruders do not express your true Self—the literal “home” of your integrity—but represent ill-considered behaviors that make very little logical sense. All the same, they do make a great deal of psychological sense once you can identify what these avoidant, escapist, or aggressive parts of you are trying to protect against (namely, the resurgence of old, still-unreleased emotional pain).
. . . Which is why your endeavoring to fully resurrect the Self, and transform its well-intentioned but misguided parts, is one of the highest, noblest endeavors you could ever undertake.
So—are you up for it?
Two earlier posts of mine in Psychology Today closely complement this piece. They are “The Paradoxical Rationale for Self-Sabotage, Part 2” (2010) and “What Your Anger May Be Hiding” (2008).
For those of you interested in learning more about the IFS model, besides the references listed below, your search engine will direct you to an abundance of articles on the subject—as will YouTube, which will display a large assortment of videos dedicated to it.
© 2017 Leon F. Seltzer, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved.
References
Internal Family Systems. The Center for Self Leadership. https://selfleadership.org/ (the official website for IFS)
Murphy, B. About internal family systems therapy. http://www.selfledsolutions.com/resources/aboutifs.html
Schwartz, R. C. (1995). Internal family systems therapy. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Schwartz, R. C. (2001). Introduction to the internal family systems model. Oak Park, IL: Trailhead.
Schwartz, R. C. (2008). You are the one you’ve been waiting for: Bringing courageous love to intimate relationships. Oak Park, IL: Trailhead.
Sweezy, M. & Ziskind, E. L. eds. (2013). IFS: Internal family systems therapy: New dimensions. New York, NY: Routledge.
Sweezy, M. & Siskind, E. L., eds. (2017). IFS: Innovations and Elaborations in Internal Family Systems Therapy. New York, NY: Routledge.

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The real ‘me’….and how our society sabotages it

Oct 24, 2019 by adminner

I am struck by the way the Mind is usually looking through a kind of telescope of ideas which feels like ‘me’ – and because the ‘me’ has set itself up against the rest of Life it feels afraid , alone and on the run. Healing seems to me to be an involuntary surrender – whether this is through sex, laughter, or insight which comes when we see through the ways in which our own ideas reify Life. Unfortunately – tragically – we seem to be in the grip of a collective mania where we increasingly feel alone and on the run, and believe it is our fault….The following article comes from George Monbiot in the Guardian on the 5th august 2014.
Deviant and Proud
5th August 2014

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Do you feel left out? Perhaps it’s because you refuse to succumb to the competition, envy and fear neoliberalism breeds
By George Monbiot, published in the Guardian 6th August 2014
To be at peace with a troubled world: this is not a reasonable aim. It can be achieved only through a disavowal of what surrounds you. To be at peace with yourself within a troubled world: that, by contrast, is an honourable aspiration. This column is for those who feel at odds with life. It calls on you not to be ashamed.
I was prompted to write it by a remarkable book, just published in English, by a Belgian professor of psychoanalysis, Paul Verhaeghe(1). What About Me?: The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society is one of those books that, by making connections between apparently distinct phenomena, permits sudden new insights into what is happening to us and why.
We are social animals, Verhaeghe argues, and our identity is shaped by the norms and values we absorb from other people. Every society defines and shapes its own normality – and its own abnormality – according to dominant narratives, and seeks either to make people comply or to exclude them if they don’t.
Today the dominant narrative is that of market fundamentalism, widely known in Europe as neoliberalism. The story it tells is that the market can resolve almost all social, economic and political problems. The less the state regulates and taxes us, the better off we will be. Public services should be privatised, public spending should be cut and business should be freed from social control. In countries such as the UK and the US, this story has shaped our norms and values for around 35 years: since Thatcher and Reagan came to power(2). It’s rapidly colonising the rest of the world.
Verhaeghe points out that neoliberalism draws on the ancient Greek idea that our ethics are innate (and governed by a state of nature it calls the market) and on the Christian idea that humankind is inherently selfish and acquisitive. Rather than seeking to suppress these characteristics, neoliberalism celebrates them: it claims that unrestricted competition, driven by self-interest, leads to innovation and economic growth, enhancing the welfare of all.
At the heart of this story is the notion of merit. Untrammelled competition rewards people who have talent, who work hard and who innovate. It breaks down hierarchies and creates a world of opportunity and mobility. The reality is rather different. Even at the beginning of the process, when markets are first deregulated, we do not start with equal opportunities. Some people are a long way down the track before the starting gun is fired. This is how the Russian oligarchs managed to acquire such wealth when the Soviet Union broke up. They weren’t, on the whole, the most talented, hard-working or innovative people, but those with the fewest scruples, the most thugs and the best contacts, often in the KGB.
Even when outcomes are based on talent and hard work, they don’t stay that way for long. Once the first generation of liberated entrepreneurs has made its money, the initial meritocracy is replaced by a new elite, which insulates its children from competition by inheritance and the best education money can buy. Where market fundamentalism has been most fiercely applied – in countries like the US and UK – social mobility has greatly declined(3).
If neoliberalism were anything other than a self-serving con, whose gurus and think tanks were financed from the beginning by some of the richest people on earth (the American tycoons Coors, Olin, Scaife, Pew and others)(4), its apostles would have demanded, as a precondition for a society based on merit, that no one should start life with the unfair advantage of inherited wealth or economically-determined education. But they never believed in their own doctrine. Enterprise, as a result, quickly gave way to rent.
All this is ignored, and success or failure in the market economy are ascribed solely to the efforts of the individual. The rich are the new righteous, the poor are the new deviants, who have failed both economically and morally, and are now classified as social parasites.
The market was meant to emancipate us, offering autonomy and freedom. Instead it has delivered atomisation and loneliness. The workplace has been overwhelmed by a mad, Kafka-esque infrastructure of assessments, monitoring, measuring, surveillance and audits, centrally directed and rigidly planned, whose purpose is to reward the winners and punish the losers. It destroys autonomy, enterprise, innovation and loyalty and breeds frustration, envy and fear. Through a magnificent paradox, it has led to the revival of a grand old Soviet tradition, known in Russian as tufta. It means the falsification of statistics to meet the diktats of unaccountable power.
The same forces afflict those who can’t find work. They must now contend, alongside the other humiliations of unemployment, with a whole new level of snooping and monitoring. All this, Verhaeghe points out, is fundamental to the neoliberal model, which everywhere insists on comparison, evaluation and quantification. We find ourselves technically free but powerless. Whether in work or out of work, we must live by the same rules or perish. All the major political parties promote them, so we have no political power either. In the name of autonomy and freedom we have ended up controlled by a grinding, faceless bureaucracy.
These shifts have been accompanied, Verhaeghe writes, by a spectacular rise in certain psychiatric conditions: self-harm, eating disorders, depression and personality disorders. Of the personality disorders, the most common are performance anxiety and social phobia; both of which reflect a fear of other people, who are perceived as both evaluators and competitors, the only roles for society that market fundamentalism admits. Depression and loneliness plague us. The infantilising diktats of the workplace destroy our self-respect. Those who end up at the bottom of the pile are assailed by guilt and shame. The self-attribution fallacy cuts both ways(5): just as we congratulate ourselves for our successes,we blame ourselves for our failures, even if we had little to do with it.
So if you don’t fit in; if you feel at odds with the world; if your identity is troubled and frayed; if you feel lost and ashamed, it could be because you have retained the human values you were supposed to have discarded. You are a deviant. Be proud.
www.monbiot.com
References:
1. Paul Verhaeghe, 2014. What About Me?: The struggle for identity in a market-based society. Scribe. Brunswick, Australia and London.

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The courageous Heart…

Oct 24, 2019 by adminner

Christmas is often a hard time for many of us – travelling to see family we often come a cropper. People have lost faith in any deep truth – maybe many of us are seduced by the postmodern story that it is all just different stories – alt-truth.

Having been through my own deep trials, I can echo what the Buddha saw – beautifully articulated here by my teacher Almaas:

‘Giving in to Your Heart, Your Nature
Originally, to start with, human beings create all these mind relationships, these mental relationships, these splittings in relationships, to protect the love, to protect the heart from hurt. That protection comes from ignorance. We do not know that our heart is indestructible. The heart cannot be destroyed. Your heart is more permanent than your body. Even when you feel hurt, it is not ultimately your heart that is hurt. what is hurt are your identifications, your self-image, your pride. So to continue loving regardless of what happens is not giving in to the other person; it is giving in to your heart, to your nature. Sometimes we do not allow ourselves to feel loving, and to be loving, and to act loving. This is because we think that loving means we are going to be weak, or that we are going to be taken advantage of, or exploited, or that we are being stupid, or that we are going to lose something. The fact is that the moment you close your heart, you are the one who loses. If you give in to your heart, it does not mean that you are giving in to the other person. It does not mean you are giving in to negativity. You are giving in to your nature. You are surrendering to who you are. To be always loving does not mean that you do not defend yourself. The courageous heart perceives and acknowledges what is there—good or bad. It does not pretend that there is no negativity. It perceives the negativity and deals with it with love. So to continue to be loving does not mean that you are weak. It does not mean that you are going to be dominated by someone. In fact, to have a courageous heart means you are able to be inwardly alone and independent. There is no true autonomy without a courageous heart. And there is no courageous heart without true autonomy.’
Diamond Heart Book IV, p. 201 •

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“With every step I do, I go towards you. Because who am I and who are you if we don’t understand one another?”

Oct 24, 2019 by adminner

I just spent a week living half way up a Swiss mountain in a Zen community, one of whose trustees is the Benedictine monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast. The following is an edited version of a conversation between him and Krista Tippett, which I think makes a very valuable point as to how we cannot escape anxiety, and that when we do not resist it, but face it, it can be part of the birth of a new form of Life.

BR. STEINDL-RAST: This power pyramid that has characterized our society, our whole civilization from the very beginning, for 5,000 years now. This pyramid of power, where even all our admirable culture, and music, and inventions, and science, is all bought at the price of oppression and exploitation. It’s very sad, but this power pyramid is in process of collapsing. That’s what’s happening in our times. And if you speak to people who are close to the top, and I have been privileged to speak to people pretty high up in politics, in economy, in science, in all the different fields, medicine and so forth, and everybody says we have come to the end of the rope, things are breaking down, people who really have an insight. Because this pyramid…has no future.

MS. TIPPETT: …the form and the structure of how we did power and created …

BR. STEINDL-RAST: It has to be replaced by network. And everybody knows that. And every group that — monks are by no means the only ones, there are many, many communes and other groups out there — that live network, or a network of friends a network of women who serve. These networks, they are the future. Raimundo Panikkar, you probably came across him, one of the great minds of the 20th century, said the future will not be a new, big tower of power. Our hope in the future is the hope into well trodden paths from house to house, these well trodden paths from house to house. That is the image that holds a lot of promise for our future.

MS TIPPETT: You lived through a moment in the early 20th century, which, arguably, as bad as we may feel it is now, was so much more horrendous in terms of millions of people dying, and global crises, people starving, and you talked about the refugee crisis then, we have, literally, people dying by the side of the road, and you were involved in that.
But you said something in this dialogue that you said — you said actually, “We have had many thousands of crises in our history, but this world finds itself not only in a crisis, but on the brink of self-annihilation.” That the stakes are higher, somehow, now. And I wonder if you would talk about that, but also talk about how, in this kind of moment, how is it even reasonable, or how is it vital to talk about, to use language like “gratitude” and “gratefulness?” Like, how is that a resource for us? How does it make sense in this moment?

BR. STEINDL-RAST: Yes. Well, when we look at things like global warming, or the destruction of the environment, or this uncontrollable violence that’s breaking out here and there, and can’t be — you can’t touch it, you can’t grab it, that is really — I think that justifies us to say we are at the brink of self-annihilation. However, we must acknowledge our anxiety about it. We must acknowledge our anxiety. But we must not fear. And gratefulness is …

MS. TIPPETT: We have to acknowledge our anxiety, but we must not fear.

BR. STEINDL-RAST: Not fear. There is a great difference. See, anxiety, or anxious, being anxious, this word comes from a root that means “narrowness,” and choking, and the original anxiety is our birth anxiety. We all come into this world through this very uncomfortable process of being born, unless you happen to be a cesarean baby. It’s really a life-and-death struggle for both the mother and the child. And that is the original, the prototype, of anxiety. At that time, we do it fearlessly, because fear is the resistance against this anxiety. See? If you go with it, it brings you into birth. If you resist it, you die in the womb. Or your mother dies.

MS. TIPPETT: So, anxiety is a — not just an understandable, but a reasonable response to a lot of human experience.

BR. STEINDL-RAST: It’s a reasonable response, and we are to acknowledge it and affirm it, because to deny our anxiety is another form of resistance.

MS. TIPPETT: Right. And so, that is reasonable, but the fear is actually that moment of resisting.

BR. STEINDL-RAST: But the fear is life destroying.

MS. TIPPETT: And it’s a completely different move, and it takes us, our bodies, our minds, in a completely different direction.

BR. STEINDL-RAST: Destroys it, yeah. And that is why we can look back at our life, not only at our birth, but at all other spots where we got into really tight spots and suffered anxiety. Anxiety is not optional in life. It’s part of life. We come into life through anxiety. And we look at it, and remember it, and say to ourselves, we made it. We got through it. We made it. In fact, the worst anxieties and the worst tight spots in our life, often, years later, when you look back at them, reveal themselves as the beginning of something completely new, a completely new life.

MS. TIPPETT: Right, right.

BR. STEINDL-RAST: And that can teach us, and that can give us courage, also, now, that we think about it, in looking forward and saying, yes, this is a tight spot. It’s about as tight spot as the world has ever been in, or at least humankind. But, if we go with it — and that will be grateful living — if we go with it, it will be a new birth. And that is trust in life. And this going with it means you look, what is the opportunity …

MS. TIPPETT: So, and I think, for you, what you’re getting at, for you, gratitude is as much about being present to the moment, but it’s also, to you, about seeing the opportunity in the moment. Beyond…

BR. STEINDL-RAST: I am seeing the opportunity.

MS. TIPPETT: …the current circumstances.

BR. STEINDL-RAST: And availing yourself of the opportunity: And that is very difficult because anxiety has a way of paralyzing us. You see? But what really paralyzes us is fear. It’s not the anxiety, it’s the fear, because it resists. The moment we give up this resistance — and so, everything hinges on this trust in life. Trust. And with this trust, with this faith, we can go into that anxiety and say, it’s terrible, it feels awful. But it may — I trust that it is just another birth into a greater fullness.

MS. TIPPETT: You’ve said that God is a direction, rather than a something.

BR. STEINDL-RAST: A direction. Yes, but not an impersonal direction, see?

MS. TIPPETT: Mm-hmm.

BR. STEINDL-RAST: There is a wonderful line by Rilke in which he prays to God. You know German so, I’ll say it first in German…

MS. TIPPETT: And I love Rilke, as you do. Yeah, say it in German, please do.

BR. STEINDL-RAST: He says, “Ich geh doch immer auf Dich zu, mit meinem ganzen Gehen. Denn wer bin ich und wer bist du, wenn wir uns nicht verstehn?” So he says, “With every step I do, I go towards you. Because who am I and who are you if we don’t understand one another?” See? That is spoken to that great mystery, but when I say mystery, I mean not something vague, I mean something very clear.

MS. TIPPETT: Well, that gets us back to the sense of belonging. That belonging at the core of …

BR. STEINDL-RAST: It’s right in there. I go to you, see? The moment a human being says “I,” at that moment I have posited a “you.” That means I’m saying “I” because I’m related to a “you,” that mysterious “you” that is always here. And in that sense, this mystery is not something impersonal.

MS. TIPPETT: Mm-hmm. It’s relational.

BR. STEINDL-RAST: It’s a relation — ultimately everything boils down to relation.

MS. TIPPETT: Yeah. You also said, I found this such an interesting — “Mysticism is the experience of limitless belonging.”

BR. STEINDL-RAST: Yes.

MS. TIPPETT: That mysticism — because, again, I think that’s a word — you use the word “mysticism” in Western culture, and people might think of something very abstract and very elite.

BR. STEINDL-RAST: No, no. I believe that every one of us is a mystic because we have this experience of belonging once in a while, out of the blue, this — women often say when they give birth to a child, they have it, or when we fall in love, we have this sense of belonging. Or, sometimes, without any particular reason, suddenly out in nature you feel one with everything. And every human being has this. But what we call the great mystics, they let this experience determine and shape every moment of their lives. They never forgot it. And we humans, the rest of us, tend to forget it. We just forget it. But if we keep it in mind, then we are really related to that great mystery. And then we can find joy in it.

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The Natural Mind

Oct 24, 2019 by adminner

Nearly all of us are lost in the stories that go on in our minds. Mindfulness is the capacity to step back and begin to deconstruct the movie: to see it without reacting. If we do this patiently, honestly and courageously, we begin to see thoughts are only real because we invest our attention in them. They come and go, like waves, and disapear by themselves if we don’t hold onto them. The real Mind cannot be found – just because we are it. We create an image of ourself which is constantly on the run – running away and running after. If we have the courage to face our fear and not invest in blind hope, we may be fortunate enough to be the knowing. Then we may find, as the 12th century Chan master Hongzhi Zhenjue writes:
“Silent and still, abiding in itself; just like this—in suchness, it is apart from conditioning, where luminosity is vast and spacious, without any [emotional] dust—directly [the self] is thoroughly relinquished. Arriving at this fundamental place, one realizes that it is not something newly acquired. From the ancient home before the great kalpa, (aeons) there has been utter clarity without any obscurations; in its liveliness and readiness, it shines alone. Though it is like this, it is not realized without enacting it. (engaging it in practice) Precisely in the process of enacting it, the direct teaching is to not give rise to a single thing, not to allow a speck of dust to cover it. In this great rest where [vexations are] dried up and frozen, there is vast and penetrating understanding. If this resting cannot thoroughly exhaust [vexations] and one wishes to reach the realm beyond birth and death, there can be no such place! Just directly penetrate through. One will then resolve [this matter] thoroughly without the dust of conceptual thinking. Being pure, there are no conditioning speculations. Take a backward step and open your grasping hands. Thoroughly resolve this matter. Then, your ability to put forth light and respond to the world will be appropriate—merging with myriad objects, just right, on all occasions.”

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How IFS developed…by Dr Richard Schwartz..

Oct 24, 2019 by adminner

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We all know about those luminous moments of clarity and balance, in our own lives and in those of our clients, which come briefly now and again. However we get there, we suddenly encounter a feeling of inner plenitude and open heartedness to the world that wasn’t there the moment before. The incessant nasty chatter inside our heads ceases, we have a sense of calm spaciousness, as if our minds and hearts and souls had expanded and brightened. Sometimes, these evanescent experiences come in a bright glow of peaceful certainty that everything in the universe is truly okay, and that includes us – you and me individually – in all our poor struggling, imperfect humanity. At other times, we may experience a wave of joyful connection with others that washes away irritation, distrust, and boredom. We feel that, for once, we truly are ourselves, our real selves, free of the inner cacophony that usually assaults us.
            For much of my life, the closest I’d come to actually experiencing this kind of blissful oneness was on the basketball court. Over the years I’d become addicted to basketball because of the fleeting moments when I entered into a state in which my inner critics disappeared and my body seemed to know just what to do. I had total confidence in my abilities and experienced a sense of joy and awe at being spontaneously in the moment.
            When I became a family therapist, I longed to experience something similar in sessions with my clients. Instead my work seemed hard, frustrating, and draining. I believed that it was up to me to restructure families – to use the force of my personality to pry apart enmeshed relationships and open up blocked communication patterns. I thought I needed to change clients by pure force of intellect and will. I had to come up with reframes for their symptoms, solutions to their problems, and new perspectives on their dilemmas. And then I had to find a way to motivate them to do the homework I gave them, and to not feel totally frustrated when they didn’t. All this responsibility for creating change, and doing it quickly, not only precluded any peak experiences in my work, it was burning me out.
            Then in the early 1980’s, I began noticing that several clients with eating disorders described extensive internal conversations with what they called different parts of themselves when I asked bout what happened inside them to make them binge and purge. I was intrigued. I had one client, Diane; ask the pessimistic voice she was describing why it always told her she was hopeless. The voice responded that it said she was hopeless so that she wouldn’t take any risks and get hurt; it was trying to protect her. This seemed like a promising interaction. If this pessimist really had benign intent, then Diane might be able to negotiate a different role for it. But Diane wasn’t interested in

negotiating. She was angry at this voice and kept telling it to just leave her alone. I asked
her why she was so rude to the pessimist and she went on a long diatribe, describing how that voice had made every step she took in life a major hurdle.
            It then occurred to me that I wasn’t talking to Diane, but to another part of her that constantly fought with the pessimist. In an earlier conversation, Diane had told me about an ongoing war inside her between one voice that pushed her to achieve and the pessimist who told her it was hopeless. Could it be that the pushing part had jumped in while she was talking to the pessimist?
            I asked Diane to focus on the voice that was so angry at the pessimist and ask it to stop interfering in her negotiations with the pessimist. To my amazement, it agreed to “step back,” and Diane immediately shifted out of the anger she’d felt so strongly seconds before. When I asked Diane how she felt toward the pessimist now, it seemed like a different person answered. In a calm, caring voice, she said she was grateful to it for trying to protect her, and felt sorry that it had to work so hard. Her face and posture had also changed, reflecting the soft compassion in her voice. From that point on, negotiations with the inner pessimist were easy.
            I tried this “step back” procedure with several other clients. Sometimes we had to ask two or three voices to not interfere before the client shifted into a state similar to “Diane’s, but we got there nonetheless. When they were in that calm, compassionate state, I’d ask these clients what voice or part was present. They each gave a variation of the following reply: “that’s not a part like those other voices are. That’s more of who I really am. That’s my Self.
            I’ve devoted the ensuing two decades refining methods for helping clients to release this state and to get in this state myself, for I’ve found that the most important variable in how quickly clients can access their Selves is the degree to which I’m Self-led. When I can be deeply present to my clients from the core of my being, free from anxiety about how I’m doing, or who’s in control of the therapy, or whether the client is following the correct therapeutic agenda, clients respond as if the resonance of my Self were a tuning fork that awakens their own. It’s this deep, true, and faithful presence of the therapist – without portfolio or baggage – that every client yearns to connect with.

The Self in the Consulting Room
            I’m meeting for the first time with an anorexic client, Margie, in a residential treatment center where I’m a consultant. She’s fought with her anorexia for 19 years, and has found that whenever she starts feeling better about herself, she stops eating. Before the session, I focus on my internal world – to center myself. I hear a familiar voice of fear saying that she’s obviously very fragile and I shouldn’t do anything to upset her. I tell that part of me that I’ll be sensitive to her condition, and ask that it trust me and let my heart open again. I focus on my heart and sense the protective crust that had enveloped it as I approached the time of the session melt away. I can feel more sensation now in my chest and abdomen, with a vibrating energy running through my limbs. I feel calm and confident as Margie enters the office and sits down.

            She looks like a cadaver and has a feeding tube in her nose. Her movements are controlled and rigid. She eyes me warily. At once, I feel great compassion for her and respect for the parts of her that don’t trust me. And may not want to work with me. I’m not invested in a certain outcome for this session. I’d like to help her, but I’ll be fine if she chooses not to let me in. I’m curious about what her anorexia has been up to all these years, yet I am certain that it has good reasons for doing this to her. I feel the energy in my body extending nonverbally through my heart toward her, and trust that at some level she can sense it. I’m confident that, if I can remain in this state, whatever is supposed to happen will – I don’t have to make anything happen.
I introduce myself and tell her that I’m good at helping people with the parts of them that make them not eat. I ask Margie where she finds that voice of anorexia in her body and how she feels toward it. She closes her eyes and says it’s in her stomach, and she’s angry at it. She says that it tells her that it’s going to kill her and that there’s nothing she can do about it. I feel a jolt of fear clenching my gut and hear a familiar inner voice saying, “it’s determined to kill her and is succeeding. What if you say something that makes it even more determined!” Again, I quickly reassure the fear with words like, “Trust me. Remember that if I stay present something good always happens.” My abdomen immediately relaxes and the soft, flowing energy returns to my body.
In a calm, confident voice I tell Margie, “It makes sense that you’re angry with the eating disorder part, because its avowed purpose is to screw up your life or even kill you. But right now, we just want to get to know it a little better, and it’s hard to do that when you’re so angry with it. We’re not going to give it more power by doing that- just get to know more about why it wants to kill you. So see if the part of you that’s so angry with it is willing to trust you and me for a few minutes. See if it’s willing to relax to maybe watch as we try to get to know the eating disorder part.” She says okay and when I ask how she feels toward the eating disorder now, she says she’s tired of battling with it. I have her ask that part to relax and step back too, and then another part that was very confused by the disorder. Remarkably for someone in her condition, each time she asks a part to step back, it does. Finally, in response to my question of “how do you feel toward the eating disorder now?” she says in a compassionate voice, “Like, I want to help it”.
The moment in a session when a client suddenly has access to some degree of Self always gives me goose bumps. Up until then I’d had to repeatedly reassure my fear and my own inner pessimist, who, as each new part of Margie’s took over, were sure I could never get access to the Self of someone who was so emaciated and symptomatic. At the point that her own compassionate Self emerged, all my parts could relax and step back because they knew from experience that the rest of the session would go smoothly.
How did I go from often dreading doing therapy, hoping clients would cancel, and feeling chronically depleted, to enjoying therapy as a spiritual practice filled with experiences of connection and awe-inspiring beauty? How did I come to be as refreshed after an intense therapy session as if I’d been meditation for and hour? How did doing therapy come to replace playing basketball as my greatest source of that flow feeling?

The short answer is that over the years, I’ve come to trust the healing power of what I’ll call the Self in clients and in myself. When there’s a critical mass of Self in a therapy office, healing just happens. When I’m able to embody a lot of Self, as was the case with Margie, clients can sense in my voice, eyes, movements, and overall presence that I care
a great deal about them, know what I’m doing, won’t be judging them, and love working with them. Consequently, their inner protectors relax, which releases more of their Self. They then begin to relate to themselves with far more curiosity, confidence, and compassion.
As clients embody more Self, their inner dialogues change spontaneously. They stop berating themselves and instead, get to know, rather than try to eliminate, the extreme inner voices or emotions that have plagued them. At those times they tell me, they feel “lighter,” their minds feel somehow more “open” and “free.” Even clients who’ve shown little insight into their problems are suddenly able to trace the trajectory of their own feelings and emotional histories with startling clarity and understanding.
What’s particularly impressed me in those moments isn’t only that my clients, once they’ve discovered the Self at the core of their being, show characteristics of insight, self-understanding and acceptance, stability and personal growth, but that even disturbed clients, who’d seem to be unlikely candidates for such shifts so often are able to experience the same qualities. The accepted wisdom in the field during my training was that clients with truly terrible childhoods – relentless abuse and neglect- resulting in flagrant symptoms needed a therapist to construct functioning egos for them, virtually from scratch; they simply didn’t have the psychological wherewithal to do the job themselves. But even those clients, once they experienced a sense of their own core, began to take over and acquire what looked like real ego strength on their own, without my having to shovel it into them. And yet, almost no Western psychological theories could explain where this newfound and quite amazing ability to contain and understand their inner turmoil had come from.
The more this happened, the more I felt confronted by what were in essence spiritual questions that simply couldn’t be addressed in the terms of problem solving, symptom-focused, results-orientated, clinical technique. I began my own novice’s exploration into the literature of spirituality and religion and discovered a mother lode of esoteric writings by sages, holy seekers, wise men and women, who emphasized meditative and contemplative techniques as a means of coming to know their Self.            (“Esoteric” here means not exotic or far out, but derives from the Greek esotero, which means “further in.”) Though they used different words, all the esoteric traditions within the major religions – Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Judaism, Islam- emphasized their same core belief: we are sparks of the eternal flame, manifestations of the absolute ground of being. It turns out that the divine within – what the Christians call the soul or Christ Consciousness, Buddhists call Buddha Nature, the Hindus Atman, the Taoists Tao, the Sufis the Beloved, the Quakers the Inner Light – often doesn’t take years of

meditative practice to access because it exists in all of us, just below the surface of our extreme parts. Once they agree to separate from us, we suddenly have access to who we really are.
I have also found, however that the most important variable in how quickly clients can access their Self is the degree to which I am fully present and Self-led. It’s this presence that constitutes the healing element in psychotherapy regardless of the method or philosophy of the practitioner.

Obstacles to Self-Leadership
Yet being Self-led with clients isn’t easy. There are so many ideas we’re taught about clients and about doing therapy that fuel our fears and keep us distant. The DSM-IV keeps our focus on our client’s scariest and most pathological aspects. Our training encourages us to constantly monitor ourselves to avoid doing anything unprofessional, such as letting clients know how we feel about them or what our life is like. We stay on guard to ensure that clients don’t violate our clinical boundaries or peek behind our professional masks.
            In addition to the way we learn to view and relate to clients, we also bring lots of personal baggage into our offices that’s easily triggered by their stories or behavior and is another source of disconnection. We have to deal with these in order to work from our Self. For example, in the early years of my work with sexual-abuse survivors, I’d encourage them to embrace the terrified, young parts of them that were stuck in the time during the abuse. As my clients emotionally described the horrific scenes they were witnessing, I’d listen for a while, but then find myself distracted by daydreams or thoughts about what I needed to do that evening. Since they were so absorbed in their inner worlds, I assumed that it didn’t matter much if I checked in and out during that work, despite the occasional complaint from one of them that I didn’t seem to be totally present.
            Only when a compelling personal crisis drove me into therapy and I spent a year and a half in my therapist’s office, crying much of the time, did I finally get to know the sad, humiliated, and terrified young parts of me that I’d spent my life trying to keep buried. As I helped those vulnerable boys, the voices that protected them also quieted down. The arrogant intellectual, the angry rebel, the driven careerist, even the contemptuous and harping self critics telling me how inadequate I was, all of them found new roles.
            After that, I found that I can stay with my clients even when they’re in intense pain, because I’m no longer afraid of my own. If I notice myself beginning to drift off, I can remind the distracter that I no longer need it to help me that way, and I’ll immediately snap back. These days, my clients take more risks, entering the inner caves and abysses they used to circle around, because they sense that I’ll be with them through the whole journey. And staying with them provides continued opportunities to visit and embrace again the vulnerability they stir in me, affording me a full appreciation of their

courage, along with their terror and shame. Increasingly, I find tears of compassion and then joy flooding my eyes in the middle of sessions, and I’m less afraid to let clients see those tears and know how much I care.
Of course, none of this is as simple as I’m making it sound. It’s an open secret, known to any halfway honest therapist, that our clients stir up in us as many unruly feelings, thoughts, prejudices, negative associations, and untoward impulses as we stir up in them. Not only are we as susceptible to the crosscurrents of contagious emotions typical of almost any human interaction as anybody else of our species, but we have certain vulnerabilities unique to our field. For one thing, we’re supposed to be perfect – in session at least – mature, selfless, perceptive, calm, lucid, kind, hopeful, and wise no matter how nasty, hostile, self-centered unreasonable, childish, despairing, and uncooperative our clients are.
            I’m sitting with a client, who’s complaining (as she frequently does) in a high-pitched, whiny voice about how hard her life is. I feel a sharp stab of annoyance. She’s very rich has numerous servants, and spends much of her time shopping and attending to her elaborate social life. Today, she’s unhappy with the antique vase in her living room that she just spent $20,000 on. I, on the other hand, am a poor, hard-working therapist, who has to put in killer weeks to make sure my kids have their college tuition. Somewhere inside I know that she was neglected and ignored as a child, and that part of her is still that lonely little girl crying for someone to pay attention. But right now, I have the urge to scream at her to shut up and quit whining. How do I reclaim my inner balance when this mean, little voice of righteous indignation so powerfully insinuates itself into my consciousness?
On another day, I’m seeing a couple – both highly successful, perfectionist, ambitious. The man, particularly, comes across as very sure of himself, overbearing, argumentative. He’s that way in his family, which is one reason the couple isn’t getting along. I sense a part of him that can’t stand being “one down” with anyone, me included, so the tone of the conversation tends to become rivalrous. I feel myself taking the bait, beginning to get caught in a slightly competitive footing with him as I counter his arguments with my own. What can I do right now to keep this from turning into a power struggle that will make us both losers?
A beautiful, young woman comes in for her first session. I find myself looking at her more than I would other clients, and a romantic, sexualized fantasy pops into my skull. Because I see a population that includes many survivors of sexual abuse, I’ve become sensitized to the damage to her trust in me this kind of energy can do. I know from experience that berating myself for these fugitive incursions doesn’t much help – I end up expending more energy trying not to feel what I feel than paying attention to the client. So how do I stop objectifying her enough to reconnect?
With all the intense provocations to which we’re subjected day in and day out, we need to find a way to keep ourselves firmly grounded and openhearted. Without being tossed about by our own reactive emotions. We have to be able to tap into something at the very core of our being that provides a deep keel for our sailboat in the storm, so we can ride the roiling waves without being submerged by them. We can’t become centered

in what I call the Self – the deep ground of our being – by trying to flatten, suppress, deny, or destroy the feelings we don’t like in ourselves or others.
To experience the Self, there’s no shortcut around our inner barbarians – those unwelcome parts of ourselves, such as hatred, rage, suicidal despair, fear, addictive need (for drugs, food, sex), racism and other prejudice, greed, as well as the somewhat less heinous feelings of ennui, guilt, depression, anxiety, self-righteousness, and self-loathing. The lesson I’ve repeatedly learned over the years of practice is that we must learn to listen to and ultimately embrace these unwelcome parts. If we can do that, rather than trying to exile them, they transform. And, though it seems counterintuitive, there’s great relief for therapists in the process of helping clients befriend rather than berate their inner tormentors. I’ve discovered, after painful trial and much error at my clients’ expense, that treating their symptoms and difficulties like varieties of emotional garbage to be eliminated from their systems simply doesn’t work well. Often, the more I’ve joined clients in trying to get rid of their destructive rage and suicidal impulses, the more powerful and resistant these feelings have grown – though they’ve sometimes gone underground to surface at another time, in another way.
            In contrast, these same destructive or shameful parts responded far more positively and became less troublesome, when I began treating them as if they had a life of their own, as if they were in effect, real personalities in themselves, with a point of view and a reason for acting as they did. Only when I could approach them in a spirit of humility and a friendly desire to understand them could I begin to understand why they were causing my clients so much trouble. I discovered that if I can help people approach their own worst, most hated feelings and desires with open minds and hearts, these retrograde emotions will be found not only to make sense and have a legitimate purpose in the person’s psychological economy, but also, quite spontaneously, to become more benign.
            I’ve seen this happen over and over again. As I help clients begin inner dialogues with the parts of themselves holding horrible, antisocial feelings and get to know why these internal selves express such fury or self-defeating violence, these parts calm down, grow softer, and even show that they also contain something of value. I’ve found, during this work, that there are no purely “bad” aspects of any person. Even the worst impulses and feelings – the urge to drink, the compulsion to cut oneself, the paranoid suspicions, the murderous fantasies – spring from parts of a person that themselves have a story to tell and the capacity to become something positive and helpful to the client’s life. The point of therapy isn’t to get rid of anything, but to help it transform.
            As I discovered the nature of the extreme parts of my clients and increasingly was able to trust their healing Self, I became liberated. I no longer had to come up with the answers for people or wrestle with their impulses. It was like I’d been the engine of a powerboat straining to push therapy through dark storms and over big waves and then, suddenly, I could climb inside, put up a sail, and let a wise and gentle wind carry my clients and me to destinations I couldn’t have predicted. At first, it was hard to give up the sense of control over what would happen and what goals would be achieved in

sessions. But now I love the adventure of it all. It’s easy to go with the flow when you really trust the flow.
            Once that boulder of responsibility was lifted off my shoulders, I found that I could breathe again. Being able to drop my guard, as well as my inner diagnoses, strategies, pushers, and motivators, I could enjoy being the person I am. Ironically, clients enjoy me more, and resist me less when I’m in this way, too – sensing my authenticity and lack of agenda. Clients come to love the Self-to-Self connection they feel when I’m really present.
            But it’s hard to maintain that kind of presence. In addition to the parts that your clients trigger, your outside life has a way of doing that, too. The painstaking work of developmental researcher Daniel Stern and couples researcher John Gottman has shown that it’s the capacity to repair the inevitable ruptures with those we love that constitutes successful intimacy and relationship. The same is true in our relationship with our clients. Therapy is virtually never a lovely, unbroken pas de deux between therapist and client. More often it’s a series of minor fender benders and close calls, punctuated by the occasional bad wreck. Clinical work progresses via ruptures – misunderstandings, confusion, subtle conflicts, power plays, and disappointments within and between client and therapist – which are then repaired. And it’s through this process of rupture and repair that therapeutic advances are made.
            But therapists sometimes forget that it isn’t only the client who misunderstands and reacts. Those of us who use this therapeutic approach have an axiom: whenever there’s a problem in the therapy a part is interfering, but you don’t know whose it is. Sometimes it’s a wayward angry, scared, or deluded aspect of the client that’s been triggered. But it’s equally likely that a protector of the therapist has taken over without his or her awareness, and that the client is reacting to the breach in their connection.

The Healing Self in Action
How can we, with all the intense provocations to which we’re subjected day in and day out, keep ourselves firmly grounded and openhearted? To do this, we have to be able to tap into something at the core of our being.
I meet Marina, a sexual-abuse survivor, at the door for her regular session, and I know instantly that she’s really furious with me. “You were completely spaced out with me during the last session – not present at all,”she hurls at me, before going into a tirade about how cruel I was to lure her into a vulnerable emotional state and then abandon her. “You’re one heartless bastard!” she spits out in summation.
Being faced with an enraged woman, particularly one who’s angry with me has always aroused a cacophony of alarm bells in my head and sent electric shocks through my body. At the moment, I nod sagely, trying to look calm and stalling for time, until I can breathe again and marshal a response. One inner voice instantly bursts forth with, “Well, abuse survivors always blame their therapists sooner or later. This is all just projection – you’ve finally become her perpetrator!” Another irate member of my internal family chimes in, “What an ingrate she is! You’ve cut your fee for her and see her at odd hours, and look how she treats you!” An inner hysteric begins shouting, “Oh, my God,

she’s a borderline who’ll ruin your career! Danger! Danger!” Then my various inner critics weigh in with their take on the subject: “Well, she’s probably right. You probably did zone out on her. Why can’t you really be there for your clients? What kind of therapist are you, anyway? Maybe you should go into some other line of work.”
Years ago, one of those parts would have taken over and I would have gone into heavy-duty defensive mode – minimizing her feelings, taking a condescending tone of clinical wisdom to subtly let her know that she must be mistaken. Or I might have apologized but not in a heartfelt way, which would just have fueled her rage. Or I might have become one of my inner critics and begun overzealous mea culpa, apologizing effusively, letting her know that what I did was unforgivable.
            But now, I quickly quiet these inner parts, asking them to step back and just let me listen to what she’s saying. Whereas before I’d feel spacey, out of control, as if various aspects of Dick Schwartz were being catapulted from one side of the room to the other, now I remain deeply and solidly in my body – literally, embodied. I suddenly feel myself spontaneously shifting out or that frozen place, relaxing, and opening myself up to her. And now I can sense the pain behind her words, so I don’t have to meet the attack itself head on, or mollify it.
Instead, because I can see the little hurt child in there, I can talk to that child from my heart, convey my sincere regret for the pain she feels. “I can see something happened in the way I was with you last time that made you feel bad,” I say. “I don’t remember what happened, but I can see it felt very hurtful and I’m sorry. I know I do have a tendency to drift off occasionally, but I’ll keep closer eye on it and take it more seriously.” She calms down immediately because she knows I’m not trying to correct her, placate her, change her mind, or get her to see things my way. The entire conversation shifts to another level, because she feels truly heard and seen. A repair is made and we have the opportunity to work with the parts that felt so angry and hurt by me.
I’m usually able to quickly calm those protectors of mine not just because this technique of asking them to step back is so effective, but also because I’ve done other work to get my inner parts to respond to my requests. I’ve become less affected by the rage of others because I’ve spent time holding and healing some of the young, vulnerable, childlike parts of myself that used to become so terrorized by people’s angry eruptions. Since I’m less easily hurt, my inner defenders and critics have less to protect. I’ve also had lots of practice demonstrating to those protective parts how much better things go when they let me – mySelf – lead.
In training programs, we’ve devised an exercise in which one person role plays a client who provokes the therapist until a part takes over. Then the therapist finds and works with the part and asks it to let his or her Self stay present even in the face of the provocation. The more my inner family members have witnessed the power of my Self- leadership, in practice sessions and in everyday life, the more they’ve become willing to step back and trust me to deal with situations that they used to automatically take over.
In this process, I’ve tried to let my most disturbing clients become my best teachers. They’re my tormentors – by tormenting they mentor me because they trigger key wounds

and defenses that I need to heal. Also, they present ample opportunities for me to see what happens when I don’t take the bait and, instead, remain Self-led. In this age of highly technical therapies, manualized methodologies, pharmaceutical propaganda, and, of course, the managed-care-generated atmosphere of therapy-lite, it’s hard to remember the healing potential of your openhearted presence. And yet, patiently being with clients from the deepest core of ourselves is the most important resource we have to offer. I’ve learned that if I fully trust the power of my Self, I can also trust the power of my client’s Self. If I can show up with confidence, and compassion, and curiosity, my client, eventually, will show up, too, and we can spend much of our time together with a river of energy flowing between us. When that happens, we both heal.
Once you’ve attuned with your client, the session begins to flow, and there’s an almost effortless quality to the work, as if something magical were unfolding almost by itself. I don’t even think about what I’m going to say – the right words just come out, as if something were speaking through me. Afterward, I’m full of energy, as if I’d been meditating for an hour rather than doing hard, demanding, clinical work. In a sense, of course, I’ve been in a state of meditation – a state of deep mindfulness, full-bodied attention, centered awareness, and inner calm. And even after all these years, I still have the sense of being witness to something awe inspiring, as if the client and I both were connected to something beyond us, much bigger than we are.

Uncategorised

IFS takes off..

Oct 24, 2019 by adminner

IFS seems to be expanding now, lots of practitioners and trainings and a certain “hey this works” buzz gathering around it. I can’t remember how I heard about it, but I’m very glad I did. I’ve always been interested in therapies which employ the concept of “parts”, “subpersonalities”,
“ego states”, but have never felt I got beyond a certain point with the concept. IFS has, so far, proven to be the missing key I needed. It takes parts therapy past anything else I’ve tried for dynamic psychological self discovery and healing.
Jay Earley’s book is for the beginner who wants to practice IFS, including completely alone, which is highly feasible. As such it goes slowly, explains carefully, and contains a lot of encouragement for the initially unsure. It is however far from lacking in experienced wisdom, and I will testify you can do wonderful stuff with it and nothing else.
The system is incredibly user-friendly but it’s also extremely deep. It gets you right inside the issues and, unlike so many of the more cognitively-based therapies that are popular now, it really does surprise. You know you are dealing with the real stuff of the psyche — the sudden shifts, the realizations, the sheer off-the-cuff creativity, the insights given by each part painting a truly personal and dynamic picture, yet fully in control. I soon realized that I had been attempting to do similar things to this many times before, and that when I had succeeded in healing trauma in myself, the method had been similar to this, but lacking the overall concept. Yes, I really would say IFS has managed to come up with the right systems-based, loose-but-accurate formula to induce such experiences deliberately, yet organically, without any hint of being mechanical or stiff. Something I particularly appreciate is the complete lack of any *combat*. You never *overcome* resistance — you *honour* it. (None of this ‘breaking down the ego’ crap.)
The main thing about IFS is that it works, and works by honouring systemic processes and knowing just what to do with them, after having plainly worked very hard to arrive at this ingenious and soulful understanding. I really do recommend it to anyone who wants to work on themselves in a deep yet safe manner, because I think you’ll find it effective, and fascinating. This excellent book will form a great gateway. I have never been more impressed with any therapy system. – Jason Wingate

Internal Family Systems Therapy UK

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Why we torture ourselves with the desire to be perfect…

Healing – by not going somewhere else!

IFS – covering up negative emotions doesn’t work (From Psychology Today)

‘Psychology Today’ endorses the IFS model – on recovering your integrity

The real ‘me’….and how our society sabotages it

The courageous Heart…

“With every step I do, I go towards you. Because who am I and who are you if we don’t understand one another?”

The Natural Mind

How IFS developed…by Dr Richard Schwartz..

IFS takes off..

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Author: adminner