Welcome to day six of the Break Your Habits Challenge here on Insight Timer.
We all have things we keep doing,
Even when we wish we wouldn't.
This is your time to understand these patterns and find ways to hopefully do things differently.
Let's jump into today's session.
Hi,
I'm Dick Schwartz and I developed Internal Family Systems and I want to welcome you to the Break Your Patterns Challenge.
Today we're looking at a pattern so many of us know so well,
Which is giving and giving until we end up resentful.
When we say yes,
When we really want to say no,
We take care of everyone else.
We slowly lose sight of ourselves and what we need.
Then we can do damage to our relationships and ourselves.
Like every pattern in this challenge,
This one didn't come out of nowhere.
Part of you that keeps it running is actually trying to protect you.
And is often carrying what we call legacy burdens.
And these are some of the core ideas of internal family systems,
The model I design and work with.
And according to that model,
We're all born with subpersonalities that I call parts that are all valuable.
Some of them are very interested in helping other people.
And have a lot of empathy.
But some of those parts can become extreme for various reasons.
One of which is our culture,
Which,
Particularly for women,
Puts the burden of caretaking on them in our socialization processes.
So that most women have a caretaking part that can become extreme and can block them from listening to other parts of them.
But other reasons include things like you had to take care of your siblings and your family.
Because your parents abdicated and you became a parentified child.
And so that caretaking part became extreme from that and then took over your life.
It takes a toll and it exiles so many other parts of you that do want you to stand up for yourself and have a life.
And those parts will find ways to try to have a voice.
And they might even resort to physical symptoms,
Medical symptoms.
So it's good to get to know these caretaking parts.
And help them trust they don't have to keep doing this.
And so I'm going to invite you to do that now.
Take a second.
Hand.
Focus on that impulse to take care of people.
And notice where you find it in your body or around your body.
And as you notice it,
Also notice how you feel for that caretaking part.
Are you resentful of it because it dominates so much or do you value it because it helps people?
Are you afraid to deal with it?
Anything but curiosity.
We can get you to have the parts that have an attitude toward it to relax back.
So you can just get to know it,
That would be great.
So see if that's possible,
If you can open your mind to it at least,
If not your heart.
If you can't,
Because these other parts won't separate,
Don't force it.
Just get to know them and their fears about letting you do this.
But if you can get curious about this caretaking part,
Then ask what it wants you to know about why it does it and maybe why it does it so much.
And maybe what is afraid would happen if it didn't take care of everybody all the time.
And just wait for the answer.
Don't think.
And if it answered that question,
Then you learned something about what it's trying to protect in there.
And if that's true,
Maybe you can extend some appreciation to it,
Even if it dominates your life and causes problems for you.
Just let it know you get its intentions are good,
That it's really trying to help people and see how it reacts to your appreciation.
I'm asking if you could heal or change the parts it protects.
So it didn't have to do this caretaking all the time.
What might it like to do instead inside of you.
Sometimes the answer is if you didn't take care of everybody,
People wouldn't like you the way they do or abandon you.
And if that's true,
We're asking if you could heal the parts that are so afraid of that,
So this one wouldn't have to worry about that so much.
What might it like to do instead?
And like I said earlier,
Sometimes these caretaking parts aren't protecting anything.
They just have this what we call legacy burden from the culture,
That that's your role.
And if that's true,
You can ask the caretaking part if it likes having to carry that belief.
If it might be interested in giving that up so it can do something entirely different.
And then ask this part how old it thinks you are.
Don't think,
Just wait for the answer to come.
Because a lot of these parts think you're still very young.
You need to do what you had to do back in those days.
So it sometimes helps them to hear how maybe you're not in that same situation and you don't have to do this as much.
It doesn't have to dominate so much now.
And finally,
Ask the caretaking part what it needs from you going forward so it can be a helper but not so much a dominator.
And whenever that feels complete,
Then thank the park for whatever it shared with you and take some deep breaths as you come back out here.
So I hope you found that useful.
Some people don't have a problem with how much they're caretaking,
And so there's no need to actually have that part change.
But many,
Many people are doing too much of it,
And it's affecting how much they can enjoy life.
So it's important to just keep reminding the part that maybe it doesn't have to work so hard.
So this is what it means to begin to break such a pattern.
Not forcing it to go away,
But understanding the part that's been carrying it and letting that part know that it can set some of that weight down,
Can unburden.
So good luck with the rest of the Break Your Patterns Challenge and take care.
