“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.”
Jack Kornfield
Something mysterious happened when I arrived at a tender point in my book revision. I passed out cold. Subsequent attempts to put words to the difficult emotions fell flat. Until now, writing through painful experiences had worked. A deadline approached and I didn’t know what to do.
My editor encouraged me to tread lightly. We made a plan to take some time and come back to it. I am resisting the urge to tear myself down. Instead, I’m thinking of it as a routine pit stop.
A new friend sent me an exercise for communicating with a buried part of yourself. You can use the technique as a regular practice. She followed along while podcaster Tim Ferriss and a therapist demonstrated the process on his show. You can find it in Episode #492 called “IFS … Finding Inner Peace for Our Many Parts.”
In all the hours perched in the corner of my therapist’s couch, I had never heard of IFS. Harvard Professor Richard Schwartz developed “Internal Family Systems” after finding that family therapy didn’t do the whole job. He observed that patients continued to be troubled by specific parts of themselves that needed to be addressed separately. He found that even the severely traumatized had the capacity to shift into a compassionate role to relate to the other parts. The true Self cannot be damaged and naturally knows how to heal. No matter what has happened, we all have access to the real Self who always responds with curiosity, calm and confidence.*
No matter if you have past trauma or not, parts of your may be in conflict with other parts. There are ways our culture, family, etc. have convinced us to banish the former happy-go-lucky, creative sides of ourselves to an inner basement. Typically, the inner child who was sensitive and vulnerable is the one who feels most frightened. One part shuts down another as a protective measure. That’s the inner conflict.
Dr. Schwartz guides Tim through a series of inquiries where one part of himself speaks to another. The results were pretty astounding. I decided to try it.
One Saturday morning, I shut my office door and hit play on my phone. As the therapist directed Tim, I paused and asked myself the questions. If you have unprocessed trauma that requires an expert, I encourage you to find one instead of running this inquiry on yourself. If you feel comfortable, here is the list of questions to ask yourself—literally ask. You’ll be surprised to hear an answer emerge from another part of who you are. It’s actually pretty cool. Here goes:
Is there a part of yourself you’d like to get to know better? A part that is getting in the way?
There is a part of me that feels sad.
Focus on that feeling, find it in your body.
It’s in my chest.
Tell me how you feel about that part?
I feel ashamed it’s still there. After all the therapy and self help, it’s stillthere.
We are going to ask both of those parts, the sad part and the ashamed part, to make some space to get to know them separately.** Will those two parts be willing to relax and let the sad one come forward?
Okay.
How do you feel about it now?
I feel a great deal of compassion for that little sad one.
Let it know you have some empathy for it, you care about it and want to get to know it better. Just ask what it wants you to know.
She is sad her mom didn’t like her.
How do you feel about that part of you?
I am so sorry she has to feel this way. I know it’s hard to carry that hurt around.
Anything else that part of you wants to say? Anything you are worried about now?
She wants me to know she tried everything to change mom’s mind about her. She finally gave up and chose to just be herself even though she knew mom didn’t like it. That sad part continues to worry about being rejected by other people for expressing who she really is.
Do you see this child inside? Can you invite her to join you? Tell this part of you that the other parts are not around right now and that you care about her. Is there anything more she wants you to know? Does she protect other parts of you?
Yes. She doesn’t allow anyone to reach the part that was rejected by mom. The other parts stand guard around that sad little one to prevent her from getting hurt ever again.
Ask if she trusts if you care about her.
Yes, she does.
Tell her to show you what you need to feel about how bad it was for her.
When she would tell mom about things she needed, it seemed like mom thought she was lying. Like she was bad. She got the message that it was wrong to express her needs. Once she shared about being mad at her friends. Mom’s criticism made her feel evil. Mom didn’t like her style—a Dorothy Hamill haircut and a pink party dress. Mom preferred hippie skirts and long, crazy hair. Her choices were unacceptable. Disapproval came from all around her except from the special teachers who loved her.
Just be with her how she needed you to be at the time. How is it for her?
Comforting. Like someone is seeing her.
Ask her what she wants you to do for her back in time.
Explain to mom that whatever she is projecting onto her child from her own past is misplaced. This daughter does not represent anyone else. She deserves your unconditional love.
What was that like to watch you do that for her?
She is glad to have someone sticking up for her.
Tell her that you will be doing that for her from now on and ask if she would like to go with you to a safe and comfortable place. Take her away from there to wherever she’d like to go.
I took her to Willy Wonka’s Chocolate factory so she could hang out by the chocolate river and never get any cavities and chill with the oompa loompas.
Would you like to let go of those beliefs that you took from that time? Ask where she carries those beliefs in her body.
In her chest.
Ask her where she would like to release it all, to what element: light, water, fire, wind, earth.
To the sky.
Take that pain out of your body and toss it up into the clouds. Invite into yourself the qualities she wants to have.
Self-worth, confidence, peace, love, respect, warmth and openness.
Bring in the part of you who is ashamed of the sad part of you. What does that part feel?
Sad memories. Rejection. Loneliness.
How does she seem?
Relieved.
Does this feel complete for now?
Yes.
Focus back outside yourself. Check in with your chest and see how it feels.
Lighter.
____
I made a great discovery during this exercise. I thought I’d held onto the pain of my mother leaving our family and/or a terrible betrayal of my best friend in college. A part of myself made very clear it was neither of those. The pain of the original blow was the rejection of my mother before anything else happened. That was the trauma I never healed from. It had seemed like nothing to me. Turned out, I had been protecting that part of myself almost my whole life.
When you are directed to talk to another part of yourself, you totally can. If you are able to feel empathy for that exiled part of you, Schwartz says you have a lot of access to your true Self, which makes this exercise a productive one. You become a compassionate witness to that hurt kid, you have a redo to tell the people who hurt you what they needed to know. Once you make it right in the eyes of that kid, you can get out of that stuck place and let go of the burdens.
Once you learn this technique, you can make it a daily practice. If you notice a part getting triggered, you can let it know it’s okay, and that everything goes better when the Self is in charge. Check in with your parts. I’ve done it a couple of times when I wake up in the morning to see how that little sad kid is doing. She asked not to be left in Wonkaland. She wants to come with me so I let her in. I’m glad I did because I needed her this week. I had to be sad for a little while and she was there to give me access to those feelings pretty quickly.
Dr. Schwartz finds that being able to have a self to self conversation, patients start to heal themselves. Cool right? Also free. That’s my favorite price.
I do feel some relief and the stirrings of a breakthrough. If I am able to write from an emotionally authentic place, that will tell the whole story. Thanks for coming along.
When you make space inside yourself to love and accept all the vulnerable parts of you, you get the sense that it’s all going to be okay.
Love,
Elizabeth
WRITING PROMPT: What part of yourself do you feel the need to protect? Ask yourself. The answer may surprise you.
* From Tim’s show notes: “IFS is now evidence-based and has become a widely used form of psychotherapy, particularly with trauma. It provides a non-pathologizing, optimistic and empowering perspective…”
**Tim named different parts of himself, obviously. These are mine.