So welcome everyone.
And thank you.
Thank you for listening.
Thank you for being here.
Now I want to start with a complaint that I hear regularly.
From intelligent self-aware people who have done a lot of work on themselves I can see my pattern.
I know exactly what I do.
I also know where it comes from.
I know what triggers it.
I've frankly read enough books to write a book myself at this point.
And I still do that thing.
I still get triggered.
I still react.
I still find myself three days into the same old behavior,
Wondering why my self-awareness,
Which is supposedly the foundation of everything,
Not actually changed anything for me.
If that sounds like you.
.
.
I want to say something at the very start.
You're not failing,
You're healing.
You are running into one of the great open secrets of inner work,
Which is that self-awareness alone on its own does not change much.
It is however the door through which everything else becomes possible.
And the entire self-help industry has been selling the door as if it were the room.
So I want to walk through what self-awareness actually is,
What it actually does.
And what comes after self-awareness that nobody really talks about.
And the slow,
Messy,
Deeply personal work of going from seeing the pattern to actually being in a different relationship with it.
And I want to do this honestly.
Including the parts that don't fit cleanly into a 30 second reel.
Because the honest version is,
In my experience,
The one that actually helps.
Now I want to begin by saying something I think most teachers and practitioners in this space don't say clearly enough.
The work may not make the pattern go away.
Some patterns do in fact in time dissolve.
Some absolutely get smaller.
Some stay roughly the size they are but you become bigger.
Until they are no longer the whole of you.
And that is absolutely not failure.
That is the actual shape of how a human being changes.
The promise that you will become unrecognizably free from all your old material is a marketing claim,
Not a clinical one.
The real work is more interesting and more sustainable.
So let me start by saying first what self-awareness actually is because it has again become a buzzword that has been thrown around in different places.
At its most basic.
Self-awareness is the capacity to notice yourself.
To notice what you're doing while you're doing it.
To notice what you're feeling while you're feeling it.
To notice the patterns in your behavior,
The predictable reactions,
The recurring shapes your life keeps making.
And this is the foundation of all inner work.
Because without it,
Nothing else can begin.
Because guess what,
You cannot work with a pattern that you cannot see.
You cannot heal a wound that you cannot locate.
And locating doesn't mean talking about it.
Locating means you see it,
You sense it,
You feel it.
And you cannot soften something that,
As far as you're concerned,
Is just the way the world is.
Now every single modality I've ever worked with.
Every modality.
Starts with the cultivation of this capacity.
Therapy in its many forms,
Meditation,
Body-based practice,
Parts work,
Family constellations,
They all in very different languages are asking you to notice.
So when I say that self-awareness alone is not enough,
I absolutely don't mean it's unimportant.
I mean that it is the first move.
And the entire field has sometimes behaved as if it were the only move.
The first move matters enormously.
Now here is what self-awareness does and does not do when you actually take it seriously.
Self-awareness with time gives you the gap.
The small space,
Possibly very fractional at first.
Between something happening and your usual reaction to it.
It is in this gap that change becomes possible.
Without the gap,
The pattern runs automatically.
And with the gap even a very small one.
For a moment,
There is a choice.
And maybe you take the choice,
Maybe you don't.
But the gap is the requirement for there being a choice at all.
However,
Self-awareness does not automatically change anything.
Because awareness without anything else is just a more articulate version of the same suffering.
There is a person who knows exactly why their people please.
And their people please anyway.
Is not better off than the person who just people pleases and they don't know what they're doing.
They're sometimes slightly worse off because the awareness now adds a layer of self-criticism and shame on top of the pattern.
So they are not only doing the thing,
They are watching themselves do it and judging themselves for it afterwards.
And this is the trap that a lot of intelligent people land in.
They get very good at noticing themselves.
They've developed a refined internal commentary on every move that they make.
They have the psychological language for everything,
Because they've done every type of therapy,
They've read all the books.
And they have somehow gotten no closer to being any different.
Because awareness alone without what comes after doesn't translate to any change.
Before I describe what comes after,
Let's take a small detour,
Because I think there is something worth saying about the modalities themselves.
Now I work across several of them,
Several traditions.
Somatic,
Family systems,
Inner child,
The integrated therapy training.
And I have been a student of meditation,
Energy work,
Spiritual traditions.
Different types of unstructured trainings.
And one of the things I've come to understand,
The longer I've done this work,
Is that modalities are in the end different doorways to the same room.
Different doorways,
Same room.
Nobody goes to therapy,
Counseling or healing for entertainment.
They want to create some sort of a shift and they find the modality,
The prakrishna,
That person that's aligned with them.
But the end result is more or less the same.
Same room,
Different doorways.
And the room is the slow,
Honest cultivation of a different relationship with what you carry.
Now somatic work approaches it through the body.
Constellation work approaches it through the family system and inner child work approaches it through the parts.
Meditation approaches it through self-awareness itself and talk therapy approaches it through the story.
Different roads,
Same destination.
And the destination is not,
Despite what the marketing of each modality might suggest,
The elimination of your difficulty.
The destination is the building of a different relationship with it.
You learn with time to see what you carry.
And then you learn to separate yourself gently from the parts of you that have been running things.
You learn to hold these old parts with care rather than criticism.
And over time,
The parts will soften.
Not because they were forced to,
Because they finally got the kind of attention they had been waiting for.
And this is why,
By the way.
.
.
I do not think there is one correct modality.
Different doorways work for different people.
Someone who has been overthinking for years often needs the body.
Someone who has been in their body for years often needs to think their way through it.
Someone whose family material is loud often needs maybe constellations.
And I'm just giving examples.
Someone whose inner child is loud often needs parts work.
So the right modality is the one that for you opens the door.
And here is the part the marketing of any modality doesn't usually say.
Most people over a lifetime of inner work will need several modalities based on their healing journey,
Based on the layers that are coming up.
So different seasons require different doors.
And the teacher who tells you that their method is the only one is almost always less trustworthy than the teacher who can name what their method does and doesn't do.
And can point you elsewhere.
When you might not be the right fit for them.
So if seeing the pattern is the first move,
Then what do I do?
What is the second?
Now the second move in nearly every modality I respect is some version of this.
You start to recognize the pattern,
The reaction,
The pain,
The behavior.
Is not just something that you do.
It is something that comes from a part of you.
A part that learned to behave this way for reasons,
A part that,
When you trace it back,
Is often quite young and was doing its best with what was available.
And different traditions name this differently.
So internal family systems call them parts.
Psychosynthesis calls them sub-personalities.
Inner child work calls them inner children.
Constellation calls them entanglements or burdens carried by someone else.
Buddhism would point at the conditioned arising of certain patterns.
So the names can vary,
But the experiential fact is always consistent.
When you really look at why you do what you do,
You stop finding a unified self that is just badly behaved,
And you start finding a collection of parts,
Each with its own history,
With its own story,
With its own job.
And this is,
I think,
One of the most useful single shifts in inner work.
The moment you stop thinking I am bad at this and start to think there is a part of me doing this for a reason.
And let that reframe land.
The moment you stop thinking,
I am bad at this and start thinking there is a part of me doing this for a reason,
The whole shape of the inner relationship changes.
Because now there is someone in here to talk to.
Now there is something to be in a relationship with.
Now the work is no longer beating your own behavior out of you.
The work is about getting to know the part that has been behaving this way and slowly understanding what it has been protecting,
What it has been carrying and what it has been waiting for.
And this,
By the way,
In my experience,
Pure cognitive work often hits the ceiling.
Because the cognitive level is where the awareness happens and the parts level is where the changes happen.
And you cannot get to the parts level by being more articulate at the cognitive level.
You actually have to step down and be open to the possibility you may not know or have all the information about the part that you're working with.
You have to step down into the body,
Into the felt sense of who is actually present in you when the pattern is running.
Now let me describe what this looks like in practice,
Because I think the language of parts can sound abstract,
Until you see what it actually does.
Let's just say there is a pattern in your life.
Maybe you collapse when conflict arises.
Maybe you people please.
Maybe you reach for the emotionally unavailable partner.
Maybe you sabotage when things are going well.
So this pattern is something you've already noticed,
I'm assuming.
And you might have knocked many doors in the hopes of trying to beat or shift this or fix this pattern out of you.
So you have done the first move already.
You can see it clearly.
The second move is,
Instead of saying,
I do this and I want to stop doing this,
How about you say there is a part of me that does this.
There is this part of me that collapses.
There is this part of me that still people pleases.
There is this part of me that still reaches for people that are not available.
And there is this part of me that interrupts the good thing.
The shift in language is very small,
But the shift in inner architecture is enormous.
Because now you are not the part.
You are the one noticing the part.
You are the one in relationship with the part.
And the part is no longer the whole of you.
It is part of you.
It may well be the strongest part of you today,
But it's still a part of you.
And the rest of you,
The wiser you,
The bigger you,
The adult you,
The mature you.
Can begin to be in conversation with it.
And I want to be really honest about how messy this is.
Because in practice,
The separation is not clean.
The part will not politely step aside and announce itself.
It often pulls you back in.
You catch yourself doing the thing,
You remember there is a part of you doing the thing,
And you separate for half a second,
And then you're right back in the middle of the thing.
Now that separation of half a second,
Repeated thousands of times over months and years,
Gradually becomes more stable.
But it is not at any point a clean clinical move.
It is a slow,
Repeated,
Often clumsy reaching for a posture that the system is not used to holding right now.
So I am gonna say this to you.
If you are doing inner work and finding it messy,
You are doing it correctly.
And anyone who tells you the work is clean and tidy.
Maybe they're lying to you or they are selling something to you.
Because inner life is not clean and tidy at all.
The slow separation from your innate patterns,
From your conditioned patterns,
Is the messiest work of all.
And once you have begun to separate from the part.
The next move is the hardest.
And this is the move that almost no self-help content takes seriously,
Because it doesn't reduce to a technique.
You have to look at the part with love.
And let me be honest about what that actually means.
I am not telling you to do affirmations.
I'm absolutely not saying the part of you is wonderful and I'm definitely not saying that go and perform acceptance.
Performing acceptance is not acceptance and the parts can spot a performance a mile off because they have lived with you for a long time.
They know when you're pretending.
Looking at this part with love means something more specific and more difficult.
It means meeting it with the same kind of attention you would extend to a child you actually loved.
With curiosity,
With patience and with the willingness to listen why it does what it does without insisting that it stops.
With the recognition that whatever it is doing,
It's doing it for a reason.
And almost always,
The reason is an old protection that almost made sense at the time.
Most of us,
When we first encounter our patterns,
We have a strong reflex to attack them,
To get rid of them and to fix them.
To make them go away.
And that's absolutely not wrong from the level of just the conscious mind.
That's understandable actually.
Because the patterns are causing a spin.
But the attacking does not work.
The parts when attacked they dig in.
Because they've been attacked their whole lives,
Often including by you.
So your attack is just one more attack in a long history of attacks.
The part has learned to survive being attacked.
So it will survive this attack too.
So what I mean is it will not produce change.
What does produce change slowly is the experience of finally not being attacked.
The part,
Having spent decades experiencing criticism,
Expecting criticism.
Gradually notices that your voice,
The internal voice,
The adult you,
The one doing the watching is not coming at it with criticism.
And instead it is coming at it with the kind of attention that it never got.
And in the presence of that attention over time,
The parts begin to soften.
Not because it was forced to,
Because it finally got the conditions it had been waiting for.
I'll give you a very,
Very,
Very simple example.
Just so you can apply this frame for yourself.
Now,
I am very aware that I people-please and I've been doing it for years and I know it's coming from my childhood and I know it's happening because of this.
Now,
All I want in my life is my people-pleasing to stop.
I've read books on boundaries,
I've done affirmations,
I've written things on my phone.
But you put me in a situation with a friend,
With a partner,
With a boss,
I'm going to do it anyways.
And then I criticize myself,
I judge myself and I question if my healing is failing.
Now if I put this situation in the framework of what we just spoke about,
You are criticizing and attacking the part of you that people pleases.
And maybe there is a possibility that that specific part of you picked up people-pleasing because maybe it was an intelligent survival response when you were two years old.
That I will do this for my dad,
For my moms and I'll get their attention.
So that's driving the behavior.
You are an adult,
You are very self-aware,
You can clearly see it.
But your relationship with it is one of criticism,
Judgment.
I want you gone.
So just take what resonates from this.
Now I want to be careful here.
Because the word soften can sound like a soft thing It is not.
Let me describe what it means.
The pattern doesn't necessarily disappear.
The people pleaser,
The trigger doesn't necessarily stop happening.
The wound doesn't necessarily stop being there.
What changes is your relationship with it.
The pattern arises and now there is more space around it.
You notice it earlier.
The reaction is less automatic.
The recovery is faster and you don't get pulled in as deeply.
And you can sometimes observe the pattern running without being run by it,
If that makes sense.
Over time,
The part itself often does change.
The compulsion eases,
The intensity reduces,
And the part having been heard and held no longer needs to shout for your attention.
The part is now being heard and held so it no longer needs to shout for attention.
And I want to be honest here,
Some parts do eventually retire.
The compulsive young protector.
Finally having been met,
Sometimes hands in its uniform.
Not because it was forced to,
Because the conditions that had made it necessary no longer exist.
And rest of the system has caught up with that fact.
And when this happens,
It's one of the most profound experiences of inner work.
And the space it leaves is enormous.
But let me remind you,
This is not the goal.
The goal is not to retire your parts.
The goal is to be in a different relationship with them.
Either they retire on their own or they soften.
Or they become less in the driver's seat.
We don't know that.
So the relationship is the work.
The outcomes follow from it,
On their own,
If when they have to.
Let me offer you something.
And absolutely not to fix anything.
Just to demonstrate very briefly what the second move feels like after seeing,
After self-awareness.
Now wherever you are.
Just settle and let your body be supported.
Eyes open,
Eyes closed,
Absolutely doesn't matter.
Now bring to mind one pattern of yours.
Something that you do.
Something that you do and you can clearly see that you would rather not do.
Just let that thing come to mind.
A pattern that I'm aware of.
Something that I do.
But I'd rather not do.
Let that come to mind,
Whatever it is for you today.
And when the body speaks to us,
It can speak to you in sensations,
Tingling,
Tightness,
Expansion,
Contraction,
Shapes,
Colors,
Anything.
Is to observe.
And now I want you to try a small shift today.
Instead of saying I do this thing.
Internally try saying there is a part of me that does this thing.
Just,
There is a part of me that does this thing.
And I don't fully know why.
There is a part of me that does this thing and I don't fully know why.
And just notice what happens when you make that small linguistic shift.
Maybe a small sense of greeting room.
May be a realization.
Maybe a softening.
Maybe nothing at all.
May be a realization that the part of you that does this thing is in fact only a part Because there are other parts of you that don't do this thing.
That have never done this thing.
Just sit with this for a few seconds.
There is a part of me that does this thing and I don't know why.
Now if you've gotten even a small sense of separation,
See if you can extend something to the part.
Not approval,
Not affirmation,
Just curiosity.
What is this doing for you?
What was it trying to protect when it first started doing this?
And what comes to mind when you imagine this part.
What was it trying to protect when it first.
.
.
Started doing this.
And just notice for the next minute.
You are not solving anything tonight.
You are just practicing the move.
The seeing,
The separating,
And the meeting with curiosity.
Those three steps,
And I'll say it again,
The seeing,
The separating,
And meeting with curiosity.
Those three steps,
Repeated over months and years,
Slowly changed something.
Not because of any one practice.
Because of accumulating relationship between you and the parts of you that have been carrying this for a long time.
The parts of you that are still hurt,
Still unhealed,
Still stuck,
Still disregulated.
Use your own language.
I want to say something before we close about the particular kind of self-criticism that often shows up in this work.
A lot of people who have done inner work have developed a particular pattern of being annoyed with themselves for not being further along.
They know about parts,
They know about patterns,
They know about the work.
And the moment they catch themselves doing the old behavior,
The inner critic arrives.
You know better than this?
You should be past this by now.
You've been working on this for years.
What is wrong with you?
This was.
.
.
However articulate,
Is itself a part.
The inner critic,
Which is itself usually a younger part that learned to police you before anyone else could.
So the inner critic,
Despite its conviction,
Is not the voice of mature self-awareness.
It is the voice of the same protective system that has been keeping things in place.
It is just doing it in a more sophisticated language now.
And the moment to apply the second move.
The parts work move is in fact here too.
There is a part of me that thinks I should be further along.
There is a part of me that thinks I should be further along.
And there is a part of me that has decided I should be failing.
The part is also young and that part also deserves to be met with curiosity.
If you can extend the same kind of attention to the inner critic that you extend to the part the inner critic is criticizing,
You have in some real sense arrived now.
And then the work is just an ongoing series of small kindness extended internally to whatever part of you happens to be in the foreground right now.
If this talk has helped you understand.
Why your self-awareness on its own has not been producing the change you were hoping for that is the work landing actually because the awareness was not wasted it was the first move and now the next move is available to you the slow messy deeply personal move which is not a technique and unfortunately it doesn't have a timeline Be gentle with yourself,
Especially with the parts of you that have been getting criticized for not changing fast enough.
They deserve finally to be met with the kind of attention they have rarely received.
So just take what resonates,
Integrate,
Process,
Mind yourself,
Listen to your body.
And until next time,
Namaste.
