Richard Schwartz Quotes

Man sagte den Priestern Soltars nach,dass sie auf ewig das letzte Wort behielten. Nur die Priester sahen es angeblich anders ... und widersprachen dem Gerücht.

Imbalanced systems,whether internal or external, will tend to polarize.

Your protectors’ goals for your life revolve around keeping you away from all that pain, shame, loneliness, and fear, and they use a wide array of tools to meet those goals—achievements, substances, food, entertainment, shopping, sex, obsession with your appearance, caretaking, meditation, money, and so on.

A part is not just a temporary emotional state or habitual thought pattern. Instead, it is a discrete and autonomous mental system that has an idiosyncratic range of emotion, style of expression, set of abilities, desires, and view of the world. In other words, it is as if we each contain a society of people, each of whom is at a different age and has different interests, talents, and temperaments. In

The big insight was that giving a troubled person a psychiatric diagnosis and seeing that as the sole or main cause of their symptoms was unnecessarily limiting, pathologizing, and could become self-reinforcing.

Parts are little inner beings who are trying their best to keep you safe.

We often find that the harder we try to get rid of emotions and thoughts, the stronger they become. This is because parts, like people, fight back against being shamed or exiled.

any approach that increases your inner drill sergeant’s impulse to shame you into behaving (and make you feel like a failure if you can’t) will do no better in internal families than it does in external ones in which parents adopt shaming tactics to control their children

When you were young and experienced traumas or attachment injuries, you didn’t have enough body or mind to protect yourself. Your Self couldn’t protect your parts, so your parts lost trust in your Self as the inner leader. They may even have pushed your Self out of your body and took the hit themselves—they believed they had to take over and protect you and your other parts. But in trying to handle the emergency, they got stuck in that parentified place and carry intense burdens of responsibility and fear, like a parentified child in a family.

We need a new paradigm that convincingly shows that humanity is inherently good and thoroughly interconnected. With that understanding, we can finally move from being ego-, family-, and ethno-centric to species-, bio-, and planet-centric.

Orte, wo keine Katzen leben wollen, sollte man meiden, Havald

Compassion as a spontaneous aspect of Self blew my mind, because I’d always assumed and learned that compassion was something you had to develop. There’s this idea—especially in some spiritual circles—that you have to build up the muscle of compassion over time, because it’s not inherent. Again, that’s the negative view on human nature at play. To be clear, what I mean by compassion is the ability to be in Self with somebody when they’re really hurting and feel for them, but not be overwhelmed by their pain. You can only do that if you’ve done it within yourself. That is, if you can be with your own exiles without blending and being overwhelmed by them and instead show them compassion and help them, then you can do the same for someone in pain who’s sitting across from you.

The Four Basic Goals of IFS 1.​Liberate parts from the roles they’ve been forced into, so they can be who they’re designed to be. 2.​Restore trust in the Self and Self-leadership. 3.​Reharmonize the inner system. 4.​Become more Self-led in your interactions with the world.

The difference here is that the Self says no to impulsive parts firmly but from a place of love and patience, in just the same way an ideal parent would. Additionally, in IFS, when parts do take over, we don’t shame them. Instead, we get curious and use the part’s impulse as a trailhead to find what is driving it that needs to be healed.

IFS can be seen as attachment theory taken inside, in the sense that the client’s Self becomes the good attachment figure to their insecure or avoidant parts. I was initially amazed to discover that when I was able to help clients access their Self, they would spontaneously begin to relate to their parts in the loving way that the textbooks on attachment theory prescribed. This was true even for people who had never had good parenting in the first place. Not only would they listen to their young exiles with loving attention and hold them patiently while they cried, they would firmly but lovingly discipline the parts in the roles of inner critics or distractors. Self just knows how to be a good inner leader.

Some discoveries I made about parts: •​Even the most destructive parts have protective intentions. •​Parts are often frozen in past traumas when their extreme roles were needed. •​When they trust it’s safe to step out of their roles, they are highly valuable to the system.

how we relate in the inner world will be how we relate in the outer. If we can appreciate and have compassion for our parts, even for the ones we’ve considered to be enemies, we can do the same for people who resemble them. On the other hand, if we hate or disdain our parts, we’ll do the same with anyone who reminds us of them.

In the same vein, if you don’t fear your own anger, you’ll be able to stay Self-led when someone’s angry at you. The person’s judgment of you won’t trigger your own inner critics, because you know who you are, and because those critical parts of you have retired or taken on new roles. So many of the obstacles in our relationships are because we fear the mayhem that someone else’s behavior will create in our inner systems. When Self leads, the mayhem is gone. The

You can become your own healer—the special person your vulnerable parts have been waiting for. When that happens, your partner will be released from the redeemer trap and its accompanying projects, and true intimacy will be possible.

Another kind of happiness exists that you can feel steadily whether you are in a relationship or not. It comes from the sense of connectedness that happens when all your parts love one another and trust and feel accepted by your Self.

Dort sind Runen, die durch den Rubin leuchten, doch ich kann sie nicht lesen!« »Ich kann sie lesen«, teilte uns Zokora mit. Wir schauten sie fragend an. »Und?«, fragte ich sie ungeduldig, als sie nichts sagte. »Was steht dort?« »Bitte dreimal läuten.«

The mono-mind paradigm has caused us to fear our parts and view them as pathological. In our attempts to control what we consider to be disturbing thoughts and emotions, we just end up fighting, ignoring, disciplining, hiding, or feeling ashamed of those impulses that keep us from doing what we want to do in our lives. And then we shame ourselves for not being able to control them. In other words, we hate what gets in our way.

Jimmy Carter echoes that sentiment: “What is needed now, more than ever, is leadership that steers us away from fear and fosters greater confidence in the inherent goodness and ingenuity of humanity.”2 Our leaders can’t do that, however, with the way we currently understand the mind because it highlights the darkness in humanity.

From the IFS point of view, the quieting of the mind associated with mindfulness happens when the parts of us usually running our lives (our egos) relax, which then allows parts we have tried to bury (exiles) to ascend, bringing with them the emotions, beliefs, and memories they carry (burdens) that got them locked away in the first place.

The clarity of Self gives you a kind of X-ray vision, so you see behind the other person’s protectors to their vulnerability, and in turn your heart opens to them.

They’re all good parts forced into roles they don’t like, they don’t deserve, and they’re eager to leave, but they just don’t think it’s safe enough to do that.

move from being ego-, family-, and ethno-centric to species-, bio-, and planet-centric.

The irony is that a Self-to-Self relationship based on courageous love is so fulfilling that if you were to taste it, you wouldn’t be inclined to leave it.

The challenge is to do both—to love someone intensely and with abandon while simultaneously fostering their growth, even if it’s away from you, and accepting their parts.

The challenge is to do both—to love someone intensely and with abandon while simultaneously fostering their growth, even if it’s away from you, and accepting their parts. Not many people can do that.

Jeff Brown explores the phenomenon in depth in his film Karmageddon: “After my childhood, I needed the kinds of spirituality that would keep me from allowing the pain to surface…. I was confusing self-avoidance with enlightenment.”9

through a Christian lens, through IFS people wind up doing in the inner world what Jesus did in the outer—they go to inner exiles and enemies with love, heal them, and bring them home, just as he did with the lepers, the poor, and the outcasts.

Parts often become extreme in their protective efforts and take over your system by blending. Some make you hypervigilant, others get you to overreact angrily to perceived slights, others make you somewhat dissociative all the time or cause you to fully dissociate in the face of perceived threats. Some become the inner critics as they try to motivate you to look or perform better or try to shame you into not taking risks. Others make you take care of everyone around you and neglect yourself.

IFS is a loving way of relating internally (to your parts) and externally (to the people in your life), so in that sense, IFS is a life practice, as well. It’s something you can do on a daily, moment-to-moment basis—at any time, by yourself or with others.

finding blended parts and helping them trust that it’s safe to unblend is a crucial part of IFS. As you might have discovered in the mapping exercise, the simple act of noticing parts and representing them on a page often creates enough separation from them (enough unblending) that you can have a different perspective on them. Like the view of a city from thirty thousand feet, you can see more clearly the roles they take on and how they operate as a system. Once you’re out of the trees, you can see the forest.

5.​They are very important and deserve to be taken seriously. If you can establish a new, loving relationship with them and help them transform, they become wonderful companions, advisors, and playmates. You find yourself wanting to spend time with them and hear what ideas they have for you. Their conflicts don’t bother you much anymore, because you know they are just parts and you can help them get along—you become a good inner parent when necessary. And it becomes a lovely life practice just to spend time with them.

Often it’s not the initial protective reaction that’s the problem—it’s all the hopelessness and fear that rush in afterward and create enduring negative overrides. If I could help them manage their expectations, the endless protective chain reaction would be broken.

As the urges of these protectors consume most of your attention, they drown out and keep exiled the more sensitive and loving parts of you. As you unburden your exiles, it allows your protectors to transform, and you begin hearing more from those parts of you that aren’t so obsessed and driven—the ones who love being truly intimate with others, the ones who want to create art and move your body, the ones who want to play with family and friends, and the ones who just love being in nature. When you’re more Self-led, you become a more complete, integrated, and whole person.

3.​You often have to earn their trust. The fact that they are burdened suggests that you didn’t protect them in the past, and you may have locked them away or exploited them by depending on their extreme protective roles, so they usually have good reasons to not trust you. Like feral children, they need your love and nurturing, but they don’t trust it at first because of their history with you. Sometimes it takes you showing up in Self repeatedly and apologizing to them to regain their trust. Fortunately, they aren’t actually feral external children, so this trusting process often doesn’t take more than a few visits.

Usually, they’ve been operating by themselves in there without any adult supervision, and most of them are pretty young. When you finally turn around and give them some attention, it’s like you’re a parent who’s been somewhat neglectful, but who’s finally becoming more nurturing and interested in your children.

Some of the most powerful personal burdens are similar to what attachment theory pioneer John Bowlby called internal working models.11 He saw them as maps you developed as a child of what to expect from your caretaker and the world in general, and then from subsequent close relationships. They also tell you things about your own level of goodness and how much you deserve love and support.

She said that since marrying Kevin, she’d neglected the parts of her that loved to play with friends because he had wanted her home with him, even though he was usually in his study writing. She said she would never do that again and was glad that Kevin could now support her independence. Helen was liberating her neo-exiles, and Kevin was making room for them in their shared life. Kevin had found courageous love.

For some people, coming to realize that their protectors are not their Self is like discovering that what they thought all their life was their hair is really a wig. Many of us are so identified with certain protectors that we can’t tell when they have taken over. For example, when my ex-wife, Nancy, would say something critical of me, I would defend myself in a calm, logical way that, to me, seemed to be coming from my Self.

4.​They can cause a lot of damage to your body and your life. Because they’re frozen in dreadful scenes in the past and carry burdens from those times, they will do whatever they need to do to get your attention when you won’t listen: punish you or others, convince others to take care of them, sabotage your plans, or eliminate people in your life they see as a threat. To do these things and more, they can exacerbate or give you physical symptoms or diseases, nightmares and strange dreams, emotional outbursts, and chronic emotional states. Indeed, most of the syndromes that make up the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual are simply descriptions of the different clusters of protectors that dominate people after they’ve been traumatized. When you think of those diagnoses that way, you feel a lot less defective and a lot more empowered to help those protectors out of those roles.

Like children in external families, we each have parts that want things that aren’t good for them or for the rest of the system. The difference here is that the Self says no to impulsive parts firmly but from a place of love and patience, in just the same way an ideal parent would. Additionally, in IFS, when parts do take over, we don’t shame them. Instead, we get curious and use the part’s impulse as a trailhead to find what is driving it that needs to be healed.

As you approach the discussion with your partner, you feel a degree of calmness inside and a curiosity about their perspective. Your heart is open, so you are able to hold your love for them despite your differences. You aren’t afraid to assert your position and to speak for your parts, but you also aren’t attached to a certain outcome. You know that you will be able to comfort your parts no matter how the discussion goes, so you don’t come to it with a great deal of fear.

2.​There aren’t any bad ones. As you get to know them, you’ll learn their full range of personalities. Most are young—even the ones that dominate your life and can be quite intellectual. After parts unburden, they will manifest their true nature in valuable qualities (like delight, joy, sensitivity, empathy, wonderment, sexuality) and resources (like the ability to focus, clear discernment, problem-solving, passion for serving others or the world) that you have new access to and enrich your life.

When you have that kind of love swirling around inside you, it spills out to people around you, and those people become part of your circle of love and support. You don’t need intimate others to keep you out of the inner dark sea because that sea has been drained of its pain, shame, and fear. In your inner world, your parts are on dry, solid land and are well housed and nourished. They trust you to be their primary caretaker, which allows your partner the freedom and delight that come with being their secondary caretaker.

When I asked these protective parts what they’d rather do if they trusted they didn’t have to protect, they often wanted to do something opposite of the role they were in. Inner critics wanted to become cheerleaders or sage advisors, extreme caretakers wanted to help set boundaries, rageful parts wanted to help with discerning who was safe. It seemed that not only were parts not what they seemed, but also they each had qualities and resources to bring to the client’s life that were not available while they were tied up in the protective roles.

What I propose in this book is a hard sell in Western culture. We are primarily oriented toward getting from our partners what we need to feel good and don’t believe we can get much from ourselves. We want to transform the source of pain in the outside world rather than the source within us. That external focus—and the therapies of accommodation that subscribe to it—will only provide temporary relief at best from the inner and outer storms that gradually erode the fertile topsoil of our relationships. There is another way, and we will explore it in this book. Before we do, however, let’s further examine the problems with this accommodation premise.

Well-known neuropsychiatrist Dan Siegel has emphasized the importance of such integration in healing and has described IFS as a good way to achieve that. He writes, “Health comes from integration. It’s that simple, and that important. A system that is integrated is in a flow of harmony. Just as in a choir, with each singer’s voice both differentiated from the other singers’ voices but also linked, harmony emerges with integration. What is important to note is that this linkage does not remove the differences, as in the notion of blending: instead it maintains these unique contributions as it links them together. Integration is more like a fruit salad than a smoothie.”5 This, again, is one of the basic goals of IFS. Each part is honored for its unique qualities while also working in harmony with all the others.

While men are dying by the thousands, elite colleges are still having…” he pronounced with contempt…“rowing competitions.

I didn’t have confidence in my ability and believed a life in America would be my last chance to achieve an adequate existence.

I would recognize it when I would begin to feel the agendaless-ness of the IFS “eight Cs”: creativity, courage, curiosity, a sense of connection, compassion, clarity, calm, confidence.

The attractiveness of the risky asset depends on the time horizon of the investor. An investor who is prepared to wait a long time before evaluating the outcome of the investment as a gain or a loss will find the risky asset more attractive than another investor who expects to evaluate the outcome soon. —Richard H. Thaler, Amos Tversky, Daniel Kahneman, and Alan Schwartz, “The Effect of Myopia and Loss Aversion on Risk Taking: An Experimental Test

it is also important to consider the sociological development of what the historian Philip Cushman calls the “empty self” that arose in this country after World War II. For Cushman, American individualism lost its soul at that point to the huge pressures of industrial capitalism. Whereas before the war our individualism was tempered by a strong ethic of community service, afterward that changed.4 The American Dream of ever-upward mobility, fueled by memories of the Great Depression and by increasingly pervasive national advertising, infused that war generation with a more selfish individualism. Their baby-boomer children inherited that perspective and, in addition, experienced less of the extended family and community-focused upbringing that their parents enjoyed. Many of us have lost our connection to connection.

Self-led individuals have the great pleasure of recapturing all the energy their protectors used to expend on inhibition, containment, distraction, and rebellion.

announcement,

accompany Nurse Grafton

Saber más sobre lo que tus protectores intentan cuidar puede ayudarte a abrirles más el corazón al hacerte una mejor idea de aquello a lo que se enfrentan y todo lo que está en juego.

Think of how your work environment would be altered if the leaders in your organization related to themselves differently. If they hate the parts of themselves that want to slow down and enjoy life, they will be impatient with workers who aren’t as driven as they are. If they want to get rid of their own insecurity and anxiety, they’ll create an atmosphere in which people fear for their jobs if they show vulnerability. If they attack themselves for making mistakes, everyone will pretend to be perfect. If they fear their own inner critics, they’ll fear the judgment of others and let people become exploitive. On the other hand, if they can relate to those parts of themselves in caring ways, that compassion and acceptance will permeate the company, making it much easier for all the employees to relate compassionately to their own parts and to one another. The same process applies to your inner family. This new way of relating to yourself can’t be forced. It doesn’t work to command yourself to be curious about these parts of you or pretend to feel compassion for them. It has to be genuine. So how do you get to that point? This raises the question of who the “you” is who relates to your parts. Who are you at your core?

Blended parts give us the projections, transferences, and other twisted views that are the bread and butter of psychotherapy. The Self’s view is unfiltered by those distortions. When we’re in Self, we see the pain that drives our enemies rather than only seeing their protective parts. Your protectors only see the protectors of others. The clarity of Self gives you a kind of X-ray vision, so you see behind the other person’s protectors to their vulnerability, and in turn your heart opens to them.

Another is psychotherapist Matt Licata, who writes, ‘The ego’ is often spoken about as if it is some sort of self-existing thing that at times takes us over—some nasty, super unspiritual, ignorant little person living inside—and causes us to act in really unevolved ways creating unending messes in our lives and getting in the way of our progress on the path. It is something to be horribly ashamed of and the more spiritual we are the more we will strive to ‘get rid of it,’ transcend it, or enter into imaginary spiritual wars with it. If we look carefully, we may see that if the ego is anything, it is likely those very voices that are yelling at us to get rid of it.8

The collection of parts that these traditions call the ego are protectors who are simply trying to keep us safe and are reacting to and containing other parts that carry emotions and memories from past traumas that we have locked away inside.

Jeff Brown explores the phenomenon in depth in his film Karmageddon: “After my childhood, I needed the kinds of spirituality that would keep me from allowing the pain to surface…. I was confusing self-avoidance with enlightenment.

The mono-mind perspective, in combination with scientific and religious theories about how primitive human impulses are, created this backdrop of inner polarizations. One telling example comes from the influential Christian theologian John Calvin: “For our nature is not only utterly devoid of goodness, but so prolific in all kinds of evil, that it can never be idle … The whole man, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, is so deluged, as it were, that no part remains exempt from sin, and, therefore, everything which proceeds from him is imputed as sin.”2 This is known as the doctrine of total depravity, which insists that only through the grace of God can we escape our fate of eternal damnation. Mainstream Protestantism and Evangelicalism have carried some version of this doctrine for several hundred years, and the cultural impact has been widespread. With “Original Sin,” Catholicism has its own version.

The critical voice that harangued Debbie Ford with so much self-loathing is an example of one common type of part called a protector, which tried to keep her from taking risks by running down her confidence. The more vulnerable inner childlike part that believed her critic and, as a consequence, felt worthless and empty is an example of a type of part I call an exile.

It wasn’t that the feelings of clients’ parts were absent from the exchanges—oftentimes they were talking about very strong emotions. It’s that, because they remained a little separated from their parts, they could speak for those powerful feelings rather than being flooded by them and speaking from them.

For example, in the past, Michael would have said to Marcia in a charged, judgmental voice, “I hate the way you interrupt me when I’m trying to make a point.” When I was able to help him hold Self-leadership, he said, “When you interrupted me, it triggered an angry part of me that thinks you don’t care about my feelings.” Michael’s tone remained compassionate, and he was able to stay curious about what was happening to Marcia that made her interrupt.

When your partner is freed from the extreme pressures to both caretake your parts and deal with your rage or pouting when they don’t, your partner can be the lover, companion, and co-adventurer that you want.

Without a constant stream of affirmation from an intimate partner, most of us will experience these feelings to some degree: worthless, empty, like a loser, lonely, rejected, desperate, ugly, boring, insecure, and afraid. These are unbearable emotions that we will do anything to avoid. What we call happiness is often relief about not being in those states.

Terrence Real, the author of a valuable book on the wounding of men titled I Don’t Want to Talk About It, describes his life in a way that applies to my own experience and that of many of the men I work with.

The inner battles between women’s caretakers and their assertive parts often built over time until, seemingly out of the blue, their assertive protectors would explode with an intensity that left their husbands stunned.

In addition, because of the collusion between women’s caretaker parts and men’s entitled ones, real imbalances often exist in the lifestyles of each spouse—the wife has more responsibility and fewer resources—that fuel her rage and his reluctance to talk.

In terms of the three projects, mentioned earlier, that protective parts take on in relationships once exiles have been hurt, it seems that women are more likely to keep plugging away with the first two, while men more quickly retreat to the third. That is, because women want a relational solution to their pain, their inner critics take aim at their husband and, when that doesn’t work, at themselves, in an effort to open his heart. Men, partly in response to what feels like intolerable criticism, will give up sooner on the intimacy-generating projects and will focus instead on distractions that make them feel good, such as work, sports, and drinking alcohol.

Despite being extremely isolated inside, these childlike parts of the husbands were addicted to the little affection from their wives that was allowed to trickle down to these exiles through the walls of protection. The exiles knew that this trickle was all that kept them from a return to utter love-starvation and worthlessness. This phenomenon also explains why some men who seem so detached from their spouses are simultaneously so possessive and jealous, to the point of stalking and threatening them when they try to leave.

When this process of vulnerability and acceptance is mutual, couples form such a secure connection that their protectors relax, and their young parts know it’s safe to pop out at any time. You may know a couple whose relationship seems full of lively spontaneity and creative playfulness. They literally bring out the best in each other because they each know that all their parts are welcome to step into the warm, safe space between them. Their interactions have the feel of an improv ensemble, with a wide variety of characters jumping excitedly onto the stage and playing off each other.

Our exiles are a buried treasure that, because they are in a state of tremendous pain and need, we experience as toxic waste and remain convinced that if we get near them, we will be contaminated. Everyone around us agrees that we shouldn’t go there and instead should just get over it and not look back. This is because no one understands that what is toxic are the emotions and beliefs the exiles carry—their burdens—not the exiled parts themselves. On the contrary, those parts are the vulnerability, sensitivity, playfulness, creativity, and spontaneity that are the heart of intimacy. How can we expect to enjoy our partner when we’ve buried our joy?

The other aspect of Mona’s account I want to underscore is that she used the fight with Monk to find and heal a key exile in herself. When partners can do this, they come to trust that such disconnecting episodes, as uncomfortable as they are, can be tremendously valuable opportunities to heal in ways that will serve the relationship in the future.

None of these changes are possible if we subscribe to the current paradigm of the mind and human nature. It’s not enough to simply address specific problems—green energy initiatives, for example—because as long as we continue to view human beings as selfish, separate, and disconnected, we will continue relating to our parts in ways that make them increasingly extreme, and the host of problems we now face will find other ways to manifest.

Twenty years after working with Mary, I met Richard Schwartz, the developer of internal family systems therapy (IFS). It was through his work that Minsky’s “family” metaphor truly came to life for me and offered a systematic way to work with the split-off parts that result from trauma. At the core of IFS is the notion that the mind of each of us is like a family in which the members have different levels of maturity, excitability, wisdom, and pain. The parts form a network or system in which change in any one part will affect all the others.

When each partner has courageous love for the other, many of the chronic struggles most couples face melt away because each partner is released from being primarily responsible for making the other feel good. Instead, each knows how to care for their own vulnerability, so neither has to force the other into a preconceived mold or control the other’s journey. Courageous love involves accepting all parts of the other because there is no longer a need to keep the other in the confining roles of parent/redeemer/ego booster/protector. The other senses that acceptance and freedom, which feel wonderful and unusual to them. They come to trust that they don’t have to protect themselves from you and can keep their heart open.

Thus this ability to care for yourself emotionally permits the intimacy you seek because you have the courage to allow your partner to come close or get distant without overreacting. With less fear of losing or being hurt by your partner, you can embrace them fully and delight in their love for you.

All of these are exiling projects. In the first, we try to get our partner to exile the parts of them that threaten us. In the second, we work to exile the parts of us that we think they don’t like. In the third, we exile the parts of us that are attached to them. As I will discuss later, whenever a relationship creates exiles, it will pay a price.

You identify with your weaknesses, assuming that who you really are is defective and that if other people saw the real you, they’d be repulsed.

When people asked me if I was ready for my life to change, I don’t think I really understood what they meant. It wasn’t just that strangers would know who I was. It was this other thing that started to happen to me: when I looked in their eyes, sometimes, there was a little voice in my head wondering, Would you still be so excited to meet me if you really knew who I was? If you knew all the things I have done? If you could see all my parts?” Queer Eye star Jonathan Van Ness1

To be fully present in the world, we need to trust that we belong in it—that our existence is supported by a higher power, the culture, and our direct caretakers.

The cultural anthropologist Ernest Becker wrote, “A full apprehension of man’s condition would drive him insane.

and other twisted views that are the bread and butter of psychotherapy. The Self’s view is unfiltered by those distortions. When we’re in Self, we see the pain that drives our enemies rather than only seeing their protective parts. Your protectors only see the protectors of others.

Blended parts give us the projections, transferences, and other twisted views that are the bread and butter of psychotherapy. The Self’s view is unfiltered by those distortions. When we’re in Self, we see the pain that drives our enemies rather than only seeing their protective parts. Your protectors only see the protectors of others.

It turns out that parts aren’t afflictions and they aren’t the ego. They’re little inner beings who are trying their best to keep you safe and to keep each other safe and to keep it together in there. They have full-range personalities: each of them have different desires, different ages, different opinions, different talents, and different resources. Instead of just being annoyances or afflictions (which they can be while in their extreme roles) they are wonderful inner beings.

Some years ago, I was invited to present briefly to the Dalai Lama at a conference called Mind & Life Europe. I talked with him about what I’ve been covering here and then I asked him a question: “Your Holiness, you ask us to offer compassion to people who are our enemies, or at least to think of them with compassion. What would it be like if we did that with our inner enemies too?” That’s what this exercise is all about—to help you go to your inner enemies.

Five Things to Know About Parts 1.​Parts are innate. Infant researchers like T. Berry Brazelton report that infants rotate through five or six states, one after the other.1 Maybe those are the parts that are online when you’re born and the others are dormant until the proper time in your development when they’re needed and they kind of pop out. For example, those of you who have kids might remember that evening when you put a compliant little two-year-old to bed and the same child woke up saying no to virtually everything the next morning. That assertive part debuted overnight. So it’s the natural state of the mind to have parts.

Buddhist-derived practices of mindfulness are a step in the right direction. They enable the practitioner to observe thoughts and emotions from a distance and from a place of acceptance rather than fighting or ignoring them. For me, that’s a good first step.

Researchers who interviewed experienced meditators found that substantial percentages of them had disturbing episodes that sometimes were long-lasting. The most common of those included emotions like fear, anxiety, paranoia, detachment, and reliving traumatic memories.10 From the IFS point of view, the quieting of the mind associated with mindfulness happens when the parts of us usually running our lives (our egos) relax, which then allows parts we have tried to bury (exiles) to ascend, bringing with them the emotions, beliefs, and memories they carry (burdens) that got them locked away in the first place.

Christian theologian John Calvin: “For our nature is not only utterly devoid of goodness, but so prolific in all kinds of evil, that it can never be idle … The whole man, from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot, is so deluged, as it were, that no part remains exempt from sin, and, therefore, everything which proceeds from him is imputed as sin.”2 This is known as the doctrine of total depravity, which insists that only through the grace of God can we escape our fate of eternal damnation. Mainstream Protestantism and Evangelicalism have carried some version of this doctrine for several hundred years, and the cultural impact has been widespread. With “Original Sin,” Catholicism has its own version.

When you can be present with your parts in the inner world this way, you can lead more of your life in the outer world from this place.

some of the similarities people describe: •​A sense that all things are one. “We become aware that, say, a tree and a river—or you and I—are only different in the way two waves of the sea appear to be separate and distinct. In reality they—and we—are part of the same ocean of being.” •​An awareness that not only are we connected to everything in the world, but we also tap into a “much more stable, deep-rooted, and expansive self, which can’t be damaged by rejection and doesn’t constantly hanker for attention and is free of the anxieties that oppress the ego.” •​Compassion and love for the people around us, but also for “the whole human race, and for the whole world.” •​A new sense of clarity and wisdom that includes the calming sense that everything is okay. “We have the beginning sense that all is well, that in some strange way the world, far from being the coldly indifferent place that science tells us it is … is a benign place. No matter what problems fill our life and how full of violence and injustice the world is … everything is good, that the world is perfect.” •​A vibrating energy that runs through our body and is accompanied by a feeling of intense joy. “This isn’t a joy because of something … it’s just there, a natural condition of being.” •​A diminished fear of death and the knowledge that death is merely a transition.12

each part is like a person with a true purpose.

IFS helps people become bodhisattvas of their psyches.

parts are sacred, spiritual beings and they deserve to be treated as such.

hate themselves than to be angry at the

Two bright young men were on the air, one named Brad, who looked like Dana Carvey, and one named Mike, who looked like an agitated Steve Martin... But I have a hunch that Brad and Mike will be around for a long time. The full names, by the way are Brad Keena and Mike Schwartz.

When a book, any sort of book, reaches a certain intensity of artistic performance, it becomes literature. That intensity may be a matter of style, situation, character, emotional tone, or idea, or half a dozen other things. It may also be a perfection of control over the movement of a story similar to the control a great pitcher has over the ball. That is to me what you have more than anything else and more than anyone else. . . . The character that lasts is an ordinary guy with some extraordi-nary qualities. Perry Mason is the perfect detective because he has the intellectual approach of the juridical mind and at the same time the restless quality of the adventurer who won’t stay put. I think he is just about perfect. So let’s not have any more of that phooey about “as literature my stuff still stinks.” Who says so—William Dean Howells? Raymond Chandler to Erle Stanley Gardner, 1946

IFS can be seen as attachment theory taken inside, in the sense that the client’s Self becomes the good attachment figure to their insecure or avoidant parts. I was ini- tially amazed to discover that when I was able to help clients ac- cess their Self, they would spontaneously begin to relate to their parts in the loving way that the textbooks on attachment theory prescribed. This was true even for people who had never had good parenting in the first place. Not only would they listen to their young exiles with loving attention and hold them patiently while they cried, they would firmly but lovingly discipline the parts in the roles of inner critics or distractors. Self just knows how to be a good inner leader.

»Haben die Götter das nicht wunderbar eingerichtet? Kaum hat man eine Nacht lang geschlafen, ist das, was vergangen ist, in die Ferne gerückt, der Kummer und die Sorge des Vortages ist gemildert. Das sanfte Licht der Sonne gibt einem neue Kraft und neuen Mut.«

We’re All Multiple

The larger point I want to make here is that any approach that increases your inner drill sergeant’s impulse to shame you into behaving (and make you feel like a failure if you can’t) will do no better in internal families than it does in external ones in which parents adopt shaming tactics to control their children.

Als ich, mit Beths Pistole in der Hand, die Tür zu Mai-Lins Zimmer aufstoße, sehe ich als Erstes einen nackten Roul, der, in meterweise Seil eingewickelt, waagrecht, wie ein Paket verschnürt, von dem Lasthaken in der Decke hängt. Seine Augen sind verbunden, doch er scheint sich in Ekstase zu befinden. Mai-Lin, nur mit kurzer Hose und einem noch kürzeren Top bekleidet, das den unteren Teil ihres Busens nur knapp bedeckt, steht daneben und melkt Rouls bestes Stück mit einer Hand.

revisit each of these parts, inviting them to relax inside in open space just for a few minutes, and ask them to trust that it’s safe to let you more into your body. Their energy tends to make it harder for you to be embodied when they’re triggered. And if they’re willing to let you in more, you’ll notice a shift each time they relax—you’ll feel more space inside your mind and body. Remind them that it’s just for a few minutes, that it’s just an experiment to see what happens if they let you be there more. They don’t have to if they don’t want to, in which case you can just continue to get to know them. But if they are willing, notice the qualities of this increase in spaciousness and embodiment. Notice what it feels like to be more in your body with a lot of space.

The Magic of Thinking Big by David J. Schwartz Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl Understanding Understanding by Richard Saul Wurman The Tapping Solution for Manifesting Your Greatest Self by Nick Ortner Start With Why by Simon Sinek The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

the quieting of the mind associated with mindfulness happens when the parts of us usually running our lives (our egos) relax, which then allows parts we have tried to bury (exiles) to ascend, bringing with them the emotions, beliefs, and memories they carry (burdens) that got them locked away in the first place.

Would you still be so excited to meet me if you really knew who I was? If you knew all the things I have done? If you could see all my parts?

John Gottman’s research demonstrated that the form of the fight is less predictive of problems in a marriage than how long it takes the couple to get back on track.

Once a couple has confidence that the break in their connection is quite temporary, it’s much easier to hold some degree of Self-leadership even when protective parts are revved up.

When extreme parts are met by Self, they lose their steam. Consequently, when one partner stays Self-led and resists the invitation to the predictable dance, the pattern is broken.

possible. I felt compelled to warn them, however, that since they both had been so vulnerable, their protectors were likely to return with a vengeance whenever the other made the slightest false move.

Now I am learning that if I say bitter words to the angry man as he leaves the house, I am at the same time wounding the others, the ones I do not want to wound—the playful man teasing, the serious man talking money, and the patient man offering advice.

Once you identify one of these thoughts, emotions, or behaviors, focus on it until you can find the source of it in or around your body. Then notice how you feel toward the protective part that was making you think, feel, or act that way. Ask any other parts that are making you dislike or fear the targeted protector to relax and step back (to separate from you) so you can get to know the target part.

To simplify this process, you can just ask yourself the following questions: What am I thinking or feeling about my partner? Where in or around my body do I find those thoughts or feelings? How do I feel toward the part that’s causing me to have those thoughts or feelings? Are other parts willing to let me be curious about this part? What does the part want me to know about itself? What is it afraid would happen if it didn’t do this job?

At some point, the protector will begin to tell you more about why it’s so upset, and you will likely learn about how: (1) it feels exiled by your partner, (2) it protects a part that has been hurt before your partner entered the scene or a part that feels exiled by your partner, or (3) it is polarized with another part of you that it is afraid will take over and dominate your relationship.

What are my protectors saying about this situation? What do I want the outcome of the discussion to be, and are those parts likely to get us there? If I could behave in the discussion just the way I thought would best achieve that outcome, regardless of what my partner does, what would that look like? Are my protectors willing to trust me to handle the discussion? If not, what are they afraid would happen if they did? Can I remember that my partner has extreme protectors that don’t represent all of them and that behind them are vulnerability and love for me? How can I help my partner trust that it is safe to not lead with their protectors? If they do lead with their protectors, what do mine need so they don’t take over in response to theirs?

Just as 9/11 changed America’s perception of the world and the need to control it, those who are blindsided by abuse or neglect overbudget their own internal Pentagons to protect and control their little corners of the world. To these protective parts of them, their environment seems as dangerous today as it was when they were truly imperiled.

Now, during intense discussions with people, I check my heart from time to time to be sure that subtle protector isn’t doing the talking for me. It has a way of conveying a lack of caring for the other person that makes things worse.

Consequently, when I’m working with a couple, I institute the rule that they can talk about their own parts but not their partner’s. So, rather than complaining, “I see that your tantrumming part is here again,” you can simply say, “An angry part of me is triggered by what you’re doing right now, so let’s talk later.

Even when you can’t find any jewels in the trash heap—when it seems as if your partner is delusional—if you remain Self-led and respond to their pain rather than to their words, things improve because what they really want is for their exiles to be witnessed by you—to trust that you understand that you hurt them and regret having done that.

In many cases, then, the most realistic promise you can make in step 3 is that you will try to find and work with the parts that are behind the hurtful behavior.

When couples really get this, they stop overreacting to each other’s mood swings. When one partner has a “parts attack,” the other stays Self-led and can encourage the triggered partner to help their part.

Instead, once she returns, we initiate a small repair session of a few minutes in which I say I’m sorry for the hurtful thing I did that triggered her part, and she says she’s sorry that her part took over in such an extreme way. Bingo! We’re connected again.

In my opinion, a primary aspect of intimacy involves knowing that you can reveal any part of yourself to your partner and trusting that you will eventually receive that person’s love and acceptance in return.

If you are like many people, however, you learned from parents, peers, and other influences to exile certain parts of you. Therefore, the basement of your psyche is filled with love-starved, vulnerable inner children. Because they get so little from you, they will be obsessed with finding someone they imagine can rescue them and, out of their desperation, will blind you to that person’s faults.

Over years of working with clients in this way, I have noticed that clients’ images of exiles fit the same categories that attachment theorists use with children. That is, some clients see an image of a crying, needy boy or girl who frantically clings to them, much as ambivalently attached children cling to their mothers. Others find an inner child who seems totally distracted, unaware, or ignoring of their presence or angrily pouting and rejecting, like the avoidant children in the experiments.

when our exiles are focused on our partner, the partner will feel overburdened by our clinging, jealousy, and neediness. Then when our protectors jump in, they will feel shut out and blamed.

We each have a source of love within us called the Self. From this place, we can retrieve our exiles from our inner basements and heal their wounds sufficiently

Emerson said, “The condition which high friendship demands is the ability to do without it.” The same is true for high love—to do without your partner’s physical presence, if necessary, because you support their life’s journey, even when it departs from yours.

For each part, speak to it about that physiological impact and whether it needs to communicate with you in that way or whether you would listen otherwise.

If he attacked himself, he would strive so hard and be so perfect that no one else would criticize him.

Before this work, if anyone, but particularly Helen, was critical of Kevin, not only would he experience the discomfort of having someone upset with him but that criticism would be embellished by his own inner critic and would also fall like a depth charge into his resting pool of shame and humiliation. The pain of the present slight would be amplified by how it reverberated with all the past pain his parts still carried—his attachment injuries. As we pumped out Kevin’s pool of pain, present-day criticisms lost their charge for him.

As one might guess, she found exiled little girls that were desperate for her distant father’s affection, furious protectors that guarded those vulnerable exiles, and the caretaking part that had dominated her life for a long time and was currently held at bay by the angry parts.

When you begin to fight, each of you can: (1) pause, (2) focus inside and find the parts that are triggered, (3) ask those parts to relax and let you speak for them, (4) tell your partner about what you found inside (speak for your parts), and (5) listen to your partner from your open-hearted Self.

To understand this, we need to make a distinction between what is good for the individual and what is good for the society as a whole, between the psychology of personal autonomy and the ecology of personal autonomy. In a study focused on twenty developed Western nations and Japan, Richard Eckersley notes that the factors that seem best correlated with national differences in youth suicide rates involve cultural attitudes toward personal freedom and control. Those nations whose citizens value personal freedom and control the most tend to have the highest suicide rates.

»Wie willst du das wissen?«, fragte ich sie. »Du siehst mich doch gar nicht.« »Du hast geschnaubt. Wenn du auf diese Art schnaubst, siehst du immer dämlich aus.«

»Die Zwerge, die wir in den Höhlen des Donnerbergs gefunden haben, sahen anders aus. Ihre Gesichter waren grau wie Stein.« »Sie waren tot«, erinnerte Leandra mich. »Das könnte es erklären«, nickte ich.

The basic principles of evolutionary biology would seem to dictate that any natural phenomenon as prominent in our lives as our experience of consciousness must necessarily have some discernible and quantifiable effect in order for it to exist, and to persist, in nature at all. It must, in other words, confer some selective advantage. And that raises an obvious question: What possible selective advantage could consciousness offer if it is only a functionless phantasm? How could consciousness ever have evolved in the first place if, in and of itself, it does nothing? Why, in short, did nature bother to produce beings capable of self-awareness and subjective inner experience? True, evolutionary biologists can trot out many examples of traits that have been carried along on the river of evolution although not specifically selected for (the evolutionary biologists Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Lewontin called such traits spandrels, the architectural term for the elements between the exterior curve of an arch and the right angle of the walls around it, which were not intentionally built but were instead formed by two architectural traits that were "selected for"). But consciousness seems like an awfully prominent trait not to have been the target of some selection pressure. As James put it, "The conclusion that [consciousness] is useful is...quite justifiable. But if it is useful, it must be so through its causal efficaciousness.

They assume that women are on a mommy track, an unofficial career track that firms use for women who want to divide their attention between work and family. This assumption would be false if applied to all women. It also implies that corporate men are not interested in maintaining a balance between work and family. Even competitive, upwardly mobile women are not always taken seriously in the workplace (Carlson, Kacmar, and Whitten 2006; Heilman 2001; Schwartz and Zimmerman 1992).

As the number of choices grows further,” writes sociology professor Barry Schwartz in The Paradox of Choice,“the negatives escalate until we become overloaded. At this point, choice no longer liberates but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize.

Unbalanced systems will tend to polarize.

The American Dream of ever-upward mobility, fueled by memories of the Great Depression and by increasingly pervasive national advertising, infused that war generation with a more selfish individualism. Their baby-boomer children inherited that perspective and, in addition, experienced less of the extended family and community-focused upbringing that their parents enjoyed. Many of us have lost our connection to connection.

these symptoms and patterns are the activities of young, stressed-out parts that are often frozen in time during earlier traumas and believe that you are still quite young and powerless. They often believe that they must blend the way they do or something dreadful will happen

That is, Jesus went with compassion and curiosity and care to the exiles in the outside world and healed them—the lepers, the poor, the outcasts.

This is a brief meditation that I do a version of each day, as do many people who follow the IFS path. I encourage you to try it out as a daily practice. Get comfortable and, if it helps, take deep breaths. Then start by focusing on and checking in with whatever parts you are actively working with. To do that, see if you can find each of them in or around your body and get curious about how they’re doing. That is, ask each if there’s anything it wants you to know or if it needs anything—like you might with a child that’s in your care. As you’re getting to know it, at some point help it get to know you better—the you that’s with it now—since most of the time these parts don’t really know you. Instead, they’ve been interacting with other parts in there and they often believe that you are still a young child. Often this is their first encounter with you—the you who’s curious about them and cares about them. So let them know who you are, even how old you are, since they often think you’re much younger. Let them know that they’re not alone anymore and see how they react. You can ask, if you like, how old they thought you were. You can even ask them to turn around and look at you.

In our attempts to control what we consider to be disturbing thoughts and emotions, we just end up fighting, ignoring, disciplining, hiding, or feeling ashamed of those impulses that keep us from doing what we want to do in our lives. And then we shame ourselves for not being able to control them. In other words, we hate what gets in our way.

Since the Inner Critic is one of the most difficult and tenacious issues that people face, we have collaborated on a serious study of how to work with and transform it. This book shows you how to address your Inner Critic using a powerful form of therapy: Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS). Developed by Richard C. Schwartz, PhD, this cutting-edge form of psychotherapy has been spreading rapidly across the country since 2000. IFS can help you transform your Inner Critic into an inner resource that supports and helps you.

The Self is indeed more than the sum of your parts. It’s also in everyone, although it needs a certain amount of hardware (i.e., brain capacity) to operate fully. Young children can’t fully access Self, although they can embody enough Self to heal themselves emotionally—a process witnessed and described by many IFS child therapists. Children don’t have the brain power to fully protect themselves in the world, regardless of how much their parts might allow them to be Self-led. And this is partly why your parts lost trust in your Self’s leadership when you were hurt as a young child—you couldn’t protect them at the time, and they think they have to take over.

In fact, most meditations can be seen as unblending practices. Whether you mindfully separate from thoughts and emotions by noticing them from a place of calm acceptance or by repeating a mantra that puts them to sleep, you are accessing the Self.

You can get a great deal from your partner if you are willing to share the responsibility of taking care of your parts rather than placing the onus totally on your partner. When your partner is freed from the extreme pressures to both caretake your parts and deal with your rage or pouting when they don’t, your partner can be the lover, companion, and co-adventurer that you want. Once you heal your own exiles, you can drop the drawbridge of your castle and allow your partner enough access to you to create an enjoyable relationship.

If, on the other hand, you recognize that your sudden absence of love is caused by the activation of protective parts of you that have blocked your love in the way that the moon obscures the sun during an eclipse, you can trust that there is no need to panic or do something rash. Instead, you use that numbing experience to signal the need to listen inside to discover why you’ve become so protective and what needs to change, both internally and externally, to help your protectors trust that it is safe to open your heart again.

When your partner chronically acts in ways that bother you, you tend to: (1) assume that behavior represents a core personality trait that you’re stuck with and (2) attribute a selfish or pathological motive to the behavior. Because of these monolithic attributions, you will be critical or contemptuous of your partner, and they will respond in kind.

Our empty selves have been conditioned to sate that hunger with material possessions, which has created a powerful economy that gives us the illusion that we are doing well. But our inner lives are not doing well.

Another kind of happiness exists that you can feel steadily whether you are in a relationship or not. It comes from the sense of connectedness that happens when all your parts love one another and trust and feel accepted by your Self. When you have that kind of love swirling around inside you, it spills out to people around you, and those people become part of your circle of love and support.

That is, because women want a relational solution to their pain, their inner critics take aim at their husband and, when that doesn’t work, at themselves, in an effort to open his heart.

Where do you see highly rational, competitive, striving parts showing up in your life and in your relationships? When do you avoid bringing up issues, or when do you shut down conversations around issues? How do you feel about conflict? Do you have expectations that your partner will be nurturing and soft? How high are these expectations? How hard are your caretaking parts working? How much access do you have to your assertiveness—to your ability to ask directly for what you need? How hard is it to feel okay when distance exists in your relationship?

Different parts maintain their separateness while communicating and collaborating with each other, while the Self conducts this inner orchestra.

Another reason that protectors keep you disembodied is that being in your body gives your exiles more access to you. When protectors keep you at least slightly dissociated, numb, or in your head, you never have to feel the exiles’ emotions, which means they’re less likely to get triggered. That’s why it’s often a tough sell to get permission from protectors to re-embody. They correctly fear that you’ll feel a lot more, and they worry that it will be too much for you, because they often believe you are still quite young and in jeopardy. Additionally, your protectors have more power to dominate your life when your Self isn’t embodied, and they’ll resist your embodiment attempts if it means giving up that power to protect.

In other words, when you refuse to listen, you can turn your parts into inner terrorists, and they will destroy your body if necessary. Unfortunately, our medical system—in much the same way as a repressive political system—too often is designed to kill the messenger rather than help us get the message.

This is one way to practice a new relationship with your body. Whenever a sensation or symptom comes up, pay attention to it. What message is it trying to send you?

Parts are not imaginary products or symbols of your psyche; nor are they simply metaphors of deeper meaning. They are inner beings who exist in inner families or societies, and what happens in those inner realms makes a big difference in how you feel and live your life. If you don’t take them seriously, you’ll have a hard time doing what you’re here to do. You might be able to unburden your parts to some degree, but it will help you tremendously to enter your inner world with full conviction and treat your parts like the real and sacred beings they are. If you don’t take your parts seriously, you won’t become an effective inner leader or parent.

We went from unblending parts and releasing Self to witnessing, retrieving, and unburdening an exile, and then to helping a protector consider a new role. In addition, there was a point where I talked directly to a protector, a practice we call direct access. While many of Sam’s protectors interfered at different points, they quickly were willing to open space once he and I reassured them. This isn’t true for most people—it takes longer for their protectors to trust them and me—so don’t be frustrated if your sessions don’t move as quickly.

An exile is healed when Self retrieves it from where it is stuck in the past. Then the exile can unburden and begin to reintegrate with all the other parts in the system. When that happens, the system feels far less vulnerable and protectors also feel freed up to unburden and take on new valuable roles. Thus, all the protective energy that went into keeping you from being triggered and keeping your exiles at bay is freed up for healthier endeavors and you have new access to the wonderful feelings and resources of your healed former exiles.

As you unburden your exiles, it allows your protectors to transform, and you begin hearing more from those parts of you that aren’t so obsessed and driven—the ones who love being truly intimate with others, the ones who want to create art and move your body, the ones who want to play with family and friends, and the ones who just love being in nature. When you’re more Self-led, you become a more complete, integrated, and whole person.

In addition to the vulnerable parts of us that get hurt and then exiled, there are other lively and protective parts that don’t fit in our families, or maybe they scare people around us. Those become what I call protectors-in-

managers are one class of protectors. These parts carry heavy burdens of responsibility for which they are ill-equipped because they are young too. In family therapy, we call children who take on these adult duties parentified children. Managers are parentified inner children. They are usually very tired and stressed out. They’re trying to keep the world safe for our exiles while at the same time keeping our exiles contained. They also have the ability to numb our bodies so we don’t feel so much, because if you don’t feel, then you don’t get triggered. Managers are working all the time—some of them never sleep.

As people become more Self-led, they find themselves acting altruistically without effort and without so much inner debate, because it just feels natural to them to want to help others. This is because Self recognizes that you and the others are part of a larger body of humanity. It’s the same as when, say, your angry part starts to feel more connected and recognizes that the manager that it hated because of how much it tried to stifle the anger is also connected to the larger entity—you. This leads to parts recognizing that when one member of the system is hurt or burdened, it affects the larger system that they all belong to.

caretaking manager parts. Too many leaders have exiled so many other parts of themselves that they become overextended and burn out. Real servant leadership only works when a leader has access to Self and all of their parts. The organization they lead will then reflect the leader’s inner harmony and connectedness.

The way we relate to our parts translates directly to how we relate to people when they resemble our parts.

some forms can bring you more into your body, but others are often employed by protectors to keep you more disembodied. For this reason, it’s always valuable (and often surprising) to inquire among your parts as to whether a medication or meditation is more or less embodying of your Self. Are you using it to promote healing or to bypass your exiles? Others reasons for disembodiment include unhealthy diets, lack of exercise, addiction to devices, and the over-busy and over-worked American lifestyle. Relatedly, obsession with your body’s size and appearance—our legacy burden of body shame and appearance consciousness—leads to more dieting and constant self-scrutiny, which is also disembodying.

Unless our parts are fully on board, they will ultimately sabotage our healthy solutions.

To summarize, here’s what I’m suggesting: 1.​We lead our lives from Self as much as possible and find ways to help increasing numbers of people do the same. 2.​We heal (unburden) ourselves and one another. In the same way, I’m convinced that there are ways to help large groups uncover and unburden cultural legacy burdens like racism, individualism, consumerism, materialism, and sexism. That being said, in this larger work, I think it’s a mistake to diminish the importance of unloading our individual burdens. Until our parts feel securely attached to us, to the Earth, and to SELF, we will have protectors that crave power, adoration, material things, and status—all the things that keep us separate from one another and keep us unaware of the consequences of abusing the Earth.

Why do parts blend? Protective parts blend because they believe they have to manage situations in your life. They don’t trust your Self to do it. For example, if your father hit you as a child and you weren’t able to stop him, your parts lost trust in your Self’s ability to protect the system and, instead, came to believe they have to do it. To make the parallel to external families, they become parentified inner children. That is, they carry the responsibility for protecting you despite the fact that, like external parentified children, they are not equipped to do so. Parts often become extreme in their protective efforts and take over your system by blending. Some make you hypervigilant, others get you to overreact angrily to perceived slights, others make you somewhat dissociative all the time

Liberate parts from the roles they’ve been forced into, so they can be who they’re designed to be. 2.​Restore trust in the Self and Self-leadership. 3.​Reharmonize the inner system. 4.​Become more Self-led in your interactions with the world.

In the next minute or so, I want you to ask the part you’ve been speaking with to go into a separate waiting room. Then let the other one out so you can get to know it in the same way. And again, you’re trying to have an open heart and open mind as you listen to its side. You don’t have to agree. You just kind of want to get where it’s coming from, why it’s so charged up about this, what it’s afraid would happen if the other side won, and so on. After you’ve worked with that second part for a while, ask if it would be willing to talk to the other one directly. Reassure it that you are there to mediate and to make sure they stay respectful toward each other. It’s okay if the part’s not willing to do that. If that happens, you won’t take the next steps. But if it is willing, then invite the other one to come and sit down with the two of you.

Exercise: Dilemma Meditation Once again, I invite you to get comfortable and take some deep breaths. Now, think of a dilemma in your life—either one that you’re currently facing or one that you faced in the past. Pick an issue that you’ve experienced a lot of conflict around. And as you focus on this dilemma, notice the parts on each side of it and notice how they battle with each other. And then notice how you feel toward that battle or toward each part in the battle. Now let’s get to know each of those parts, one at a time. To do that, you’re going to ask one of them to go into a kind of waiting room. That will create a bit of a boundary that will allow the one you’re currently working with to relax a little bit. So get to know the one who’s not in the waiting room first. And again, notice what you’re feeling toward it.

Now you’re going to kind of be their therapist as they talk to each other about this issue. And again, your job isn’t to take a side—it’s just to help them get to know each other in a different way and make sure they respect each other when they talk. Remind them that they’re both a part of you, so they have that in common. Then, just see how they react as they get to know each other in this different way. Notice what happens to the dilemma. At some point, pause their discussion. Let them both know that you can meet with them more regularly in this way, and ask them if they would be willing to give you their input on dilemmas in the future, but then trust you to make the final decision. They would act more like advisors for you, rather than having the responsibility of making bigger decisions like this one

When we have lots of exiles, our protectors have no choice but to be egotistic, hedonistic, or dissociative.

This is what healing means in IFS—wholeness and reconnection, and a Self who wants to facilitate that at all levels of a system. As Wendell Berry writes, “Healing complicates the system by opening and restoring connections among the various parts, in this way restoring the ultimate simplicity of their union…. The parts are healthy insofar as they are joined harmoniously to the whole…. Only by restoring the broken connections can we be healed. Connection is health.”1

These exiles are what Freud famously called the Id, and he mistakenly assumed they were merely primitive impulses. As I discussed earlier, that negative take just added to Western culture’s detrimental view of human nature and was highly influential in psychotherapy’s disinterest in getting to know those parts of us. Once you have a lot of exiles, you feel far more delicate and the world seems more dangerous because there are so many things and people and situations that could trigger them. And when an exile gets triggered and bursts out of whatever container we keep it in, it can feel like we’re about to die, because it was exactly that scary or humiliating when the originating event happened. Or maybe, as Bly notes, we’re terrified because the exiles have become so extreme.

In contrast to the managers who try to preempt anything that’s going to trigger the exiles, these firefighter parts are activated after an exile has been triggered and desperately (and often impulsively) try to douse the flames of emotion, get us higher than the flames with some substance, or find a way to distract us until the fire burns itself out. Depending on how much you fear your exiles, your firefighters will resort to desperate measures with little regard for the collateral damage to your health or your relationships. All they know is they have to get you away from those feelings right now or else! Sometimes their fears of your death are warranted, because suicide is an option for some firefighters if other solutions don’t work.

So why is this important? For one thing, if you can become what I call the primary caretaker of your own parts, then you free intimate partners (or therapists, children, parents, etc.) from the responsibility of taking care of raw and needy exiles. Those people then can act as the secondary caretakers of your parts, which is a much more enjoyable and feasible role. Most of us have that reversed. Our exiles don’t trust our Self and consequently they and the protectors who try to get them to calm down are looking outside of us to get what they need. When we encounter a person who resembles the profile exiles have of their ideal protector, redeemer, or lover, they feel elated, infatuated, and relieved. Through what’s called positive transference, our parts put distorted images on such people, who can’t help but disappoint those extreme expectations. Then comes the negative transference from angry protectors. There are actually a number of people leading workshops on Self-led parenting. When parents are Self-led, they relate to their external children in the same way they do their internal ones—with patience, calm, clarity, love, firmness, and reassurance.

Because our particle Self is an aspect of a vibrating field, it will resonate with the Self in other people and with the Self in our parts. Physicists are increasingly recognizing that everything in the universe is constantly vibrating or oscillating at different frequencies, even stationary objects. They have also noticed that when two things approach each other, they start vibrating at the same frequency—they synchronize.

One who is slow to anger is better than a warrior, and one who rules his spirit is better than one who takes a city. —King Solomon, Proverbs 16:32 You yourself must do the strenuous work. Enlightened Ones can only show the way. —Gotama Buddha, Dhammapada 276 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: For whatever you may sow, that you will also reap. —St. Paul the Apostle, Galatians 6:7 God helps those who help themselves. —Benjamin Franklin, Poor Richard’s Almanac, 1736

The idea of taking responsibility for oneself and not making excuses is as American as apple pie.

Because this willpower ethic has become internalized, we learn at an early age to shame and manhandle our unruly parts. We simply wrestle them into submission. One part is recruited by this cultural imperative to become our inner drill sergeant and often becomes that nasty inner critic

We get tied up in knots as we desperately try to, and we generate brutal inner critics who attack us for our failings. As Van Ness notes, “I spent so much time pushing little Jack aside. Instead of nurturing him I tore him to pieces…. Learning to parent yourself, with soothing compassionate love … that’s the key to being fulfilled.”6

That being said, the ubiquitous, Buddhist-derived practices of mindfulness are a step in the right direction. They enable the practitioner to observe thoughts and emotions from a distance and from a place of acceptance rather than fighting or ignoring them. For me, that’s a good first step.

From the IFS point of view, the quieting of the mind associated with mindfulness happens when the parts of us usually running our lives (our egos) relax, which then allows parts we have tried to bury (exiles) to ascend, bringing with them the emotions, beliefs, and memories they carry (burdens) that got them locked away in the first place. Most of the mindfulness approaches I’m familiar with subscribe to the mono-mind paradigm and, consequently, view such episodes as the temporary emergence of troubling thoughts

Most of the mindfulness approaches I’m familiar with subscribe to the mono-mind paradigm and, consequently, view such episodes as the temporary emergence of troubling thoughts and emotions rather than as hurting parts that need to be listened to and loved.

the client would become. The simple act of getting these other parts to open more space inside seemed to release someone who had curiosity but who was also calm and confident relative to the critic.

transform into their original, valuable states. It’s as if a curse was lifted from an inner Sleeping Beauty, or ogre, or addict. The newly unburdened part almost universally says it feels much lighter and wants to play or rest, after which it finds a new role. The former addict part now wants to help you connect with people. The hypervigilant part becomes an advisor on boundaries.

I did an outcome study with bulimic clients and discovered with alarm that they kept binging and purging, not realizing they’d been cured. When I asked them why, they started talking about these different parts of them.

For example, clients would talk about an inner critic who, when they made a mistake, attacked them mercilessly. That attack would trigger a part that felt totally bereft, lonely, empty, and worthless. Experiencing that worthless part was so distressing that almost to the rescue would come the binge that would take clients out of their body and turn them into an unfeeling eating machine.