How This One Teaching from IFS Brought Me a New Level of Sanity in 2023
“Yes but you really should try IFS.”
“I’m convinced IFS is the best form of therapy.”
“I’m all in on IFS. You should try it.”
“I think IFS could help move your healing forward.”
These are all things my beloved and dear podcast cohost, Anne Sherry said to me from when we started planning our podcast about healing childhood trauma in 2020, through our launch in 2021, and right up until she found me one of the most incredibly talented therapists I’ve ever had the privilege to work with earlier this year.
I believed her! I did! But it was the pandemic and therapists’ rosters were decidedly: FULL.
So I waited until the spring of 2023 when the overwhelm died down a bit to reach out to new therapists for openings.
Why did I want a therapist? What was Anne convinced they could help me with?
After all, I had started my healing journey at age 20 and had worked with so many great coaches, therapists, healers, and teachers already for nearly 2 decades of my adult life. What did I still need help with?
It’s funny when we think we’re done healing.
Yesterday I posted a TikTok video by @dreamofthe2ndattention (Dylan Lamar Hearn) to my Instagram story—one of the ones using that gospel song where you think the song is done but then the song keeps coming back for another chorus, and another chorus, the key and intensity increasing with each encore—in which the creator (Dylan) lists the pieces of his healing journey, only to find he has even more healing to do, realizing finally that the healing journey doesn’t have a stopping point.
“Ahh, this is so perfect!” I thought. I’d had all the same thoughts he’d had.
Dylan’s journey starts with therapy, reading, being in nature, and psychedelics.
Just when he thinks he’s “done", he realizes he that he’s intellectualizing his feelings instead of feeling them.
Then he becomes more emotionally unavailable as he seeks to disrupt his pattern of choosing “trauma bonds.” (This is incorrect usage of the term “trauma bond”. A trauma bond is when someone bonds with their abuser—it’s very serious and important when trying to understand why people stay in abusive relationships. In this context he means choosing a romantic partner for unhealthy reasons related to past traumas.)
Then he realizes his whole personality is a trauma response!
This parallels my healing journey in so many ways. I’ll explain.
Early on I was attracted to psychedelic use and I’m so grateful. While these drugs are probably not helpful to every single person who uses them, they can powerfully remove the fearful parts of the brain for a few hours, helping us experience freedom, love, strength, and a more expansive identity that can hopefully be integrated into everyday life—they can be a nice starting place, especially if someone is stuck in their current way of thinking and can’t break free.
The depression and random crying…yes, yes, yes. When I had my big giant breakthrough in 2016, I cried for 4 straight months, sometimes literally curled up in the fetal position on the floor. I had to grieve the loss of all the delusional stories that had protected me but that I realized were making me insane.
That period of therapy and healing for me marked the lifting of so much of my delusional thinking, the start of finding an authentic self, getting to know me, the finding of my inherent inner self-worth that didn’t need so much external validation, and the start of seeing how different obnoxious behaviors were protecting my ego (like talking too much, for example), among other things. The biggest thing being finding my emotional self: feeling feelings deeply and safely. Labeling my feelings. Understanding that human life is made meaningful by emotions. That was big!
Let’s jump to 2023 and IFS. What did I still have to work on? I’d done so much!
IFS stands for Internal Family Systems. It’s a specific methodology that labels “parts” of our thinking as either “protectors,” “managers,” “firefighters,” or “exiles,” broadly. There’s more to it than that but that’s the gist. Check out the book No Bad Parts for a great primer on it.
I started with a brand new (very expensive) very talented therapist in March of this year. I was skeptical but also had faith based on the urging of Anne. I was ready for my next big healing leap.
What I got has been nothing short of a complete transformation!
My therapist has been guiding me to label different thoughts, memories, obsessions, compulsions, and ruminations as “parts”. When in session with her, we will make each part of a visible entity and ask it to give me some space. It may then reveal another, louder part that wants attention. I will make that part visible, label it, and then ask it for space. I can see how different parts ask to be seen and sometimes understand why. I have been learning how to say, “Cool, but you’re just one little part, you’re not The Truth. I don’t have to do what you say.” That’s new for me as of 2023, even though I’ve had a mindfulness practice in the past that did some of this.
Once we stop believing all the stories and ruminations, what’s left is what they call in IFS the Self, with a capital S.
There are 8 C’s and 5 P’s of Self Energy: Compassion, Creativity, Curiosity, Connectedness, Courage, Confidence, Clarity, Calm, Presence, Persistence, Perspective, Playfulness, and Patience.
We know we’re deciding from a place of Self Energy when some of the 8 C’s and 5 P’s are present.
Are we living from fear (or our adaptations to fear) or safety/trust?
It’s truly a lifelong process to see the adaptations to childhood traumas for what they are, just like Dylan realized.
Childhood trauma healing evangelist Dr. Gabor Maté said in his book, When the Body Says No: Understanding the Stress-Disease Connection, “Much of what we call personality is not a fixed set of traits, only coping mechanisms a person acquired in childhood. Strong convictions do not necessarily signal a powerful sense of self: very often quite the opposite.”
image by @thekunalshah
This year has been about realizing that, yes, much of my “personality” is a trauma response. When I bring more Self Energy in, there’s less “personality.” More stillness, wisdom, silence, trust, presence, and discernment exist. Not that anything feels necessarily easier—I feel the need to clarify! As Dylan discovered, healing is a lifelong process.
But I do feel different. And better. I have more clarity. I have better tools to redirect negative shame spirals and thought patterns. I feel better equipped to break unhealthy patterns and habits.
I think especially new is realizing how I could rationalize just about anything. And, as Dylan mentions, I was intellectualizing so many feelings instead of feeling them. Feeling feelings is hard work and my brain will spin all sorts of tales to get out of it.
It turned out, I desperately needed this IFS teaching called: unblending.
Valuing my intellect has been a huge part of my “personality”. And so in the past, I would trust my thinking brain.
This year I don’t just trust my thinking brain. I realize that a lot of my thinking is noise that was created to protect me in the past but may no longer be serving me.
What’s hard is realizing how much more often I have to admit that I was wrong!
Clinging stubbornly to being right can keep us stuck.
It’s wild to think that before this year I just believed my thoughts and rationalizations. They seemed “true.” In IFS this is called “blending.”
My therapist has been helping me “unblend” from my parts—from all the weird thoughts and rationalizations.
Let me try to explain with an example. I might sit down for therapy with something on my mind, let’s say, why my last romantic relationship ended—and I’ll just know for sure that this story is The Truth. I’ve created this story and I’m very proud of it! “Yeah, and it didn’t work out because I was like this and he did this and then this!” I’ll say animatedly.
“I hear that that’s a story you have,” she’ll say. Ouch. Busted! “Let’s get curious about labeling what part is making that story.”
Damnit. I’m wrong again. Big hit to my ego. And what’s more, the carefully crafted stories have, once again, kept me at a distance from loved ones and prevented me from truly connecting.
Doing this work has been shattering, but…
…it has had the effect of helping me feel SANE for the first time in my life.
Unblending feels like sanity.
That is until I get the next big healing download…
(It doesn’t stop.)
