Identifying & Understanding Our Subpersonalities (With Meditation)

This talk (and guided meditation) explore how the insights of contemporary therapeutic techniques can be intergrated with Insight Meditation to create a greater depth of self-understanding and self-integration. Concepts from Internal Family Systems Therapy are explored in depth, and overlaps with the dharma are investigated.

Transcript

So the Western concept certainly of mind for a long time was that there's this core thinking entity at the absolute epicenter and that this rational thought process was orchestrating the mind at its behest and that if things got in the way such as those pesky emotions and feelings and neurosis that those were like kind of outer forces getting in our way and that we were really when we are at our best we were this rational thinking ongoing process of discursive thought that maintains its belief in its rationality.

So it's not coincidental of course that thought which is a product of the left hemisphere which is largely where consciousness is also situated.

It's not surprising that thought would nominate itself and define itself as the epicenter of our personality,

Of our self,

Of our identity and it's not surprising therefore that philosophers such as Descartes would even go so far as to say that existence is founded on the very notion that I think therefore I am.

I in other words am entirely dependent on thought.

It turns out that this is very very very similar to another deeply misguided delusion for of course thousands of years and still in some pockets too in the world and populations there was this belief that Earth is at the absolute epicenter of the universe and that the Sun revolves around the Earth and it's not surprising that this belief was so fixed because at first it appears that way to us on Earth because we are on Earth it looks like the Sun is revolving around us and so when the Copernican revolution especially indebted to Galileo's work with Copernicus's I believe Gary am I right am I close okay I think Copernicus came up with a way to observe the telescope and Galileo was the one who used it and wound up paying the price for showing definitively that we are not at the epicenter of the universe.

The result of this was the placing the centrality of human beings as above and all of creation and therefore also the belief in theistic universe began to fade with this revolution.

It required a whole new organization of thought the moment we realized we were not the absolute epicenter of it all.

Likewise when the Buddha first proposed that thought is not at the epicenter of the mind that is just one more quality or aggregate of our experience one more component but not the prize center not the organizing principle not the foundation of self not the part that is making all the decisions that requires a massive shift in the way we live our lives.

So it continued of course with Freud who was the first major Western thinker who appeared and basically said that egoic functions are just one part of a tripartite mind.

Now today we know that while Freud was certainly right that the mind is complex and not centered around thought we now know that his model was overly simple.

Neuroscientists such as the great Antonio de Masi have in fact begin to show that all of our decision making all the choices we make are in fact not made by the thinking part of the mind.

The decisions we make in life the choices we make are actually almost invariably emotional and that the role of thought is to come in afterwards and to claim credit and to add reasons for why we did what we did.

We have an inkling of this already because we come up with words like rationalization and justification and stuff like that.

We have an understanding intuitively that even though we want to believe that we're our thoughts are in control there is this always this sort of nagging sense that I'm not too sure.

It feels like a lot of the time I'm making these choices these decisions in my life and I'm not entirely clear what or why or what the process is.

In fact the impulses that make our decisions Benjamin Lebed and his epic studies show happens well before thought occurs and when you have the famous both split brain patients and the people who have had strokes in various regions of the brain those that lose the ability to speak and think discursively like we do still can make choices and live happy lives.

On the other hand those that have strokes in the emotional center of the orbital front of the right orbital frontal which is where we integrate emotions and with decisions if you have a stroke there you will be able to talk and reason and you will never make a decision again in your life.

You can read the studies in the carts error by the Massey.

So this idea that we are making our choices simply through reason and the delusion that we put ourselves through one of the funniest ones is the pro and con list.

This is a complete fallacy constructed by the left hemisphere when it makes that line through the middle of the page and it writes pros why I should leave New York cons difficult to find a new job.

Sure you can list out different different elements but when it comes time to making the decision it will be an emotional one.

It doesn't matter how many pros and how many cons you will still at the end of the day be making that choice using non-conscious automatic impulses that do not arrive or arise through logical reasoning.

So we are made up in fact of what psychologists such as the brilliant Pat Ogden if you don't know who she is I would really urge going online and watching interviews with her.

She's the founder of sensory motor psychoanalysis.

She's a famous attachment theorist and she is I think one of the most brilliant human beings alive along with Leslie Greenberg and she notes that the mind is in fact made up of self states.

Self states derive from early childhood situations.

There are times for instance when in childhood our parents were available,

Attuned,

Present in a good mood and so the child in those situations has a self state.

It's relaxed,

It's creative,

It's spontaneous,

It can sing or dance,

It can act out easily from any natural impulses.

But what of the times when the parent is stressed,

Distracted by work and preoccupied?

Well at that point the child may rely on cluster B type attention getting procedures.

It might start breaking rules to get attention.

It might start relying on narcissistic tendencies of seeking a approval through listing all of its successes in school.

It might develop people pleasing tendencies.

It might start you know becoming histrionic.

Some children become sick to get attention when the parent is distracted.

Some children start amplifying certain emotions,

Hence the foundation of some histrionic tendencies.

And then there are the states where the child,

Where the parent is angry or in a dominant negative emotional state.

The parent could become suddenly dysregulated through alcohol or depression or any other number of events.

So that's the time where the child has to essentially completely get rid of its fear,

Become either overly compliant or extremely self-reliant and it needs to take a certain set of behaviors to take care of itself at all costs.

Some children will become caretakers of their parents.

Some children will learn to disappear entirely and repress all their needs and just wait until the storm in the household passes.

The whole point is that we don't arrive from childhood with only oneself.

We arrive from childhood with a whole host of self states and as events in our adult life occur that trigger a self state,

We move from one state of being.

Sometimes when we're with our friends and we feel loved and accepted we can relax,

Be funny,

Be unselfconscious.

But then when we go into work the next day we suddenly become guarded,

We lose the spontaneity and the playfulness and we become almost entirely different human being.

So the Buddha acknowledged this speaking of underlying tendencies to survive called Anasayas.

He said these were around for the entirety of our lives and they are latent and they arrive or arise,

Are triggered in certain situations.

So the idea is that the mind works as a process.

It's not a single entity,

A thing.

It's not a thinking machine.

It's actually a host of different self states or we could think of them in terms of characters in a play.

Some of them taking the spotlight while others stand in the background of the stage waiting for their turn.

Useful models are not only Freud's tripartite mind and Young's archetypes but many other psychologists offer similar models.

Alice Miller's inner child and we'll be using and of course there is emotion-focused therapies.

We'll be talking about internal family systems approach which is Richard Schwartz.

If we don't attend to the needs of the various parts of the mind they become dysregulated when it's their turn and they don't just express themselves.

They seize hold of us and they become dictatorial and they rage and they become implacable.

Key to Richard Schwartz's understanding is that the mind is comprised of various different types of parts.

We started talking about it last night.

One of the most familiar parts to us is our managers which are the parts we develop during times when our parents were stressed or busy,

Were not always available to take care of us when people were not attentive.

And so these are self-reliant parts.

They look good to the rest of the world because we develop these parts to not bother our parents to make life easier in the family to essentially take care of ourselves but also these parts are they make us they made us look good to our family.

So just to give a incomplete list I have some yeah so there's the stoic worker the stiff upper lip who drags herself or himself to work every day never complaining never taking time off.

The soapbox orator who views and states opinions about the way the world should be to all that will listen.

There's the worrier the catastrophizer who whose job it is to figure out how everything could go wrong and to let everybody know.

There's the inner critic which yields the stick of low self-esteem and is constantly beating up on ourselves so that we perform better rather than relying on connection as a way to motivate ourselves.

There is of course the people pleaser with the pleasant social face.

The caretaker who always takes care of other people and uses that process as a way to completely subsume our own needs never expressing them never asking for help.

Whenever we feel emotionally burdened we focus on the dramas of someone else and so forth and so on.

All of the parts I'll be listing in these first two groups of managers and firefighters started out as adaptive behaviors to survive difficult family situations difficult situations in childhood.

It's only in adult life when we become over reliant on any one part at the expense of all the other parts that they become what's called maladaptive.

They start isolating us and because we're trapped in one part the other parts of the minds don't get their needs met and so we start feeling starved and empty and without all of our we feel somehow that there's something missing from our lives.

So if for instance the stoic hard worker who's almost a workaholic who's constantly you know taking charge doing everything doesn't want to delegate essentially that part starves the other part that wants to share and wants to be a part of the team and wants to rely on other people and simply wants to take it easy sometimes and relax and so very often that part the the stoic hard worker that's in charge that gets everything done that takes everything on its own shoulders partners with a firefighter called resentment and rage that nobody else is helping out.

They go hand in hand because of course the part that's the hard worker that takes everything on itself that doesn't that really believes if you want to get things done you do it yourself goddammit then at the same time looks around and sees nobody else is helping and gets really disappointed and feels overburdened and why is nobody helping me and why are they sitting around while I'm cleaning up the dishes again and you know or taking care of filing everything or managing responding to all the emails etc.

So parts work in teams.

I worked with one client who was a very very is a very very lovable fellow and he works in the service industry and he his job was to make each person who came to his place of work feel special and catered to and their needs met and he called that part and it's we'll talk about how important it is to come up with names for the various parts it helps us address them and tell them apart and so and so forth so he named that part of himself jazz hands and I love that because he was always oh hello it's great to see you welcome that was great are you did you have a good trip can we help you check in you know etc.

But then when he came home his firefighter because he wasn't in his job being the you know people pleasing caretaking you know service industry person when he come home he so felt starved of soothing for himself and being cared for and being seen himself that he would essentially turn on the television and get literally a bucket of ice cream and eat junk food and watch terrible TV and he called that something like the slug and so he went back and forth between jazz hand and the slug back and forth they became a team and at no point in this this tandem where there any connecting with love with other from other people there was no creativity there was no exploring in life he found this sort of team that essentially took the entire air out of the world for him and left him stuck between these two isolating cycles of completely taking care of others and pretending that he really that know that everybody else's needs were of absolute and vital importance and that he entirely live for other people and then back into this incredibly you know indulgent but ultimately unfulfilling need to just essentially fill himself up with sensual pleasures that didn't make him feel that he was achieving anything in his life or expressing himself so yes the other most notable part types of parts are the firefighters unlike the managers firefighters don't look good to other people their second line defenses and they are there to take control when our managers are just exhausted when we can no longer maintain our managers that look good to other people and when we need something to make ourselves essentially feel good or to get rid of rage or frustrations in life sometimes firefighters can be addictions alcoholism drugs shopping from Amazon Netflix and sometimes they can just be ways to expel all the tensions that arise because we've been too married to one manager so sometimes if it might be rage or it could be social withdrawal or it could be hyper vigilance and anxiety so of course there are other types of parts that Schwartz doesn't delve into deeply I would put another kind of a part as self soothing the tendencies that we have to take care of ourselves that are healthy processes where when we become overwhelmed in life we go we get a massage we go to a sauna we go lie in the Sun we do yoga we do something we take a bike ride but these are healthy adaptive tendencies and very very few people in Western capitalism abuse their self soothing I've yet to meet it at least maybe they're maybe Gwyneth Paltrow right she's Gwyneth she's got a problem there with her self soothing everything just looks a little bit too too neat and tidy but but the rest of us we're not in any danger of overdoing the self soothing so why do we have these parts that become so concretized and so dominant in our lives unyielding well Schwartz I think smartly proposes that both managers and firefighters appear in life as ways to not feel our most painful feelings of abandonment rejection shaming the pains of childhood that are so unbearable the times when the child feels unlovable feels completely abandoned feels utterly disconnected from care and so he calls those parts the exiled I like to think of it more along the lines of the wounded child you can call it exiled wounded child the repressed whatever language makes sense to you the ideas though that we compartmentalize we wall off ourselves from certain feelings or emotions that are just because in our early life they were so unbearable that we believe in adult life we cannot possibly touch those feelings because we some we believe still that if we touch into that sadness or anger or disconnection or loneliness or feelings of rejection that they will swallow us alive that will never be able to show up again that we will fall apart that we will become entirely unput together so the role of the work that J Mo and I is will be doing is not just to connect with the exile if we simply did that but we didn't understand the needs of the various different parts including the manager and including the firefighters then we would be doing a great disservice to our other needs Schwartz uses the metaphor of the conductor and that the mind is an orchestra made up of different parts like strings wood wings timpani Celeste I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about anyway I should know more than just that right you have the strings horns brass sections percussion great so we got we got a bunch of parts there right and the role of the role of what the Buddha called Sati or mindfulness or awareness is to be the conductor what that means is the conductor doesn't actually make noise or usher behaviors itself it simply looks between the different parts sees what each part needs and begins to orchestrate life in such a way that we learn to take care of ourselves in a more balanced comprehensive way so that the needs of the manager to look good to achieve things to take care of business to have some semblance of agency in life and self-reliance is met but at the same time the need of the firefighter sometimes to just have pleasure or to just release rage and and vent it up emotions is met in some skillful way at the same time the core buried needs of the wounded child that never felt truly loved and seen and appreciated is need is met and the self soothing needs and so we begin to not just live our lives in a way where we're just desperately trying to survive at the expense of so many other needs but in fact learning to connect with these different parts a lot of the work of connecting with parts is creative it revolves it involves feeling because many of these parts speak to us not just primarily in fact through language but through felt inclinations through action potential through the body wanting to do something when you want to run away from a social gathering and just go somewhere where you can get away from all the pressures of you know performing around other people or putting on the social mask that's not a statement in your head in language it's an inclination I want to get the fuck out of here I'm not comfortable these people are they all look so put together and I'm at this wedding how the fuck did I get here I'm at a table of eight I don't know any of these other people they're all strange and I'm stuck here for the next five hours in some strange town upstate because nobody does weddings anymore in reasonable locations they're always destination I love venting on weddings anyway weddings are the worst you have to you have to be you have to be in a good mood and people when they cry at weddings have to pretend that they're crying at a happiness which is such bullshit you're either crying one because you're thinking about your own life and look at these people they look so happy and what about my relationship oh my god not a funny so what we're in our manager for a long time we have to like look good yeah how was the drive up here I really don't give a shit what you say but I'm gonna keep this smile on because oh really route I 85 was real smooth sailing that's good I need a drink so obviously we want to learn how to balance the needs and not just keep ourselves locked into one performance sometimes we need to break through the this belief that the only way we can survive a situation is if we rely on the people pleaser I've found that actually the for me with weddings the best strategy is not to go and pretend that I'm thrilled to be there but to be a little honest so I tactically find the most sympathetic looking human being and then when they say how's it going I'll say well you know I really I'm happy to see these two people getting married but I really hate weddings so I'm always in these guys and most of the time they'll just go yeah I kind of hate them too sometimes I go oh really I love weddings and then I just edge away you know look for the next possible source of solace so it's the role of of mindfulness the role of awareness is to know when one part is being over relied on and to switch to something else and very often that something else for me is disclosure expressing what's really being experienced not trying to present not trying to get it out of us or bury it with a firefighter sometimes it's simply to being honest and expressing what's being felt and that could be even another part the part of ourselves that really simply wants to honestly vulnerably connect of course if that's all we do then people are gonna go oh there's Josh again always telling us exactly what he feels about us there's this wonderful podcast what the fuck by Marc Maron and Marc Maron is a hilarious comedian but all of the podcast boiled down to him and another comedian going yeah I thought you felt this about me and I really felt that about you and I but now that I know you feel this about me I feel that about you and you're like enough say something funny so we can't even over rely on the disclosing emotionally vulnerable we need to have the part that spontaneous fun-loving at times we need to be the caretaker at times we need to be the achiever who takes care of situations pays their taxes goes to work gets things done sometimes we need to even have a cut loose you know tie one on be irresponsible you know spend money that we on things we don't really need just to have the experience it life is a can be enriching and fun and can meet all of our needs if we learn how to understand feel into and discern what the variety of needs are as usual I haven't followed any of my notes so I'm just gonna see what the where the hell I am if in fact I've made any sense okay so finally trauma of course plays a very important role as well when there's times of trauma sudden death of a caretaker and childhood some loss of a relationship suddenly getting is sick or any kind of unforeseen event that cannot be processed by the mind rationally in some way where we can narrate it and make sense of it where we are overwhelmed the strategies that we use to survive often involve freezing shutting down depersonalization which means out-of-body derealization which means the world becomes very distant we go into a fantasy realm where we don't really feel that anything is actually happening around us everything becomes distorted and to use the words of the great Bessel van der Kolk if you don't know who he is my recommendation would be find out as soon as possible his book the body keeps the score is possibly one of the most important books of the last 20 years with a couple of others Bessel says during trauma the system of parts break down and our parts become polarized and go to war with one another self-loathing co-exists and fights with grandiose parts loving care co-exists with hatred numbing and passivity co-exists with rage and aggression these extreme polarized disconnected parts become and bear the burden in quotes of the trauma so very often in extreme cases some people even have parts that are unaware of other parts existence of course we know that a split personality but and sometimes in life even people who function basically well in life can have varied dissociated parts for example if you were subject to sexual abuse or to violence early on in life the part of yourself that becomes dissociative that shuts down that freezes that goes off into another world might be experienced by the functional parts of your mind as these strange episodes where you do things that you don't clearly remember and happen in a sort of daydream I've worked with many people who cut themselves to pick at their skin who go into these rituals of self abuse that happen in their own words in a kind of fog where hours pass and they're unaware of what they've been doing and then they come out of it so yes we can have parts of ourselves that are there triggered occur but we're not even exactly clear what happens when we're in those parts or those self states so the role of mindfulness the four foundations is to develop awareness of these parts it's very important that when we through this day we connect with parts that we practice non-judgmental awareness no part deserves to be criticized or judged or disparaged even the parts of ourselves that we're tired of the stoic self reliant hard worker the know-it-all the person who is the caretaker that never gets its own needs met we don't judge any our role is to appreciate thank the parts but also be able to ask that they learn how to step aside if they've become too dominant we're just we're detaching ourselves from these parts that's crucial when we mistake ourselves for any part we lose the capability of balancing the mind and getting all of our needs met if I believe I'm the you know the I don't know insightful Buddhist teacher who can help all these people and I identify with a heaven forbid then all the other needs I have of sometimes not knowing not being able to be attentive and listen not being available being taking care of myself doing things that are fun and frivolous those don't get met so the key role is to detach from every part to develop an awareness that is not subsumed by any part of the mind that can orchestrate and see oh okay I've been diligent enough today I've been hard working enough I've taken care of business enough now it's time to do a little bit of you know slug I'll watch an hour of TV and you know eat my whatever but then I'm also going to do an hour of self soothing yoga and then I'm going to do an hour of talking on the phone or going to a meeting or connecting with a close friend and expressing how I've been doing so I'm going to orchestrate my life and that requires detaching awareness from our behavioral tendencies to not become completely swallowed up so we're going to be doing a meditation where we first will connect with managers and then after that we'll do a meditation where we connect with firefighters and it's important again that as we identify a manager that we come up with a name or some identifier it could be an image it could be a name a label but I want to make a special request that whatever you name any part that had never be a negative pejorative belittling title that you always name each part of yourself that you connect with in an appreciative or at least a neutral name label if you start by labeling a part in a negative way you won't be learning how to ask that part to step aside that part will become defensive and even more likely to try to control the show so it's very important as we learn to identify the different parts the different self states as Pat Ogden calls them or the different characters of the mind that you be appreciative because after all they started as ways to survive and take care of you they didn't start as ways to punish as ways to attack or limit us they started as ways to survive so it's important to bear that in mind okay so let's sit all right so we're gonna connect with a manager or maybe a couple of managers so we're gonna do it with a very appreciative kind caring attention so closing our eyes and finding balance within so don't try to visually align your body through having an image in your mind of how you appear find the sensations that you associate with your eyes and perhaps the sensations of the front of the chest expanding with the breath and then the sensations of the core contact with of the buttocks with the cushion or some say sensations of the pelvis hips and try to bring them into alignment so aligning felt sensations of the body from within not relying on just a sort of concept of how you look but just try to align a sensation in the head with a sensation in either the chest or shoulders with a sensation of the hips or sit bones just come up with an alignment of sensations that feels a sense of balance where you don't have to put a lot of effort into keeping yourself upright I know JMo talks about tucking the chin down that's definitely a very tried-and-true method I actually tend to do something slightly different I actually tend to tilt my head upwards like I'm looking at a tall building and I do that because I have a tendency to slouch unless I do that and so I find that some people benefit for tilting the head back which when it works it prevents the head from slouching and that if you have a tendency to fall asleep or wind up with your chin nearly resting against your chest and you feel disconnected from your body that can help so balance your head in a way that feels right for you either tucking the head slightly down or tilting it back so let's take our three breaths taking a full inhalation through the nose and lift your shoulders up holding them up and as you breathe out through the mouth releasing if it feels right for your body slightly pulling the shoulders back so each shoulder weighs a ton and it's pulled in or adjusted in such a way that your chest feels open capable of receiving the breath with a second inhalation through the nose pulling in the abdominal muscles and holding them taut and breathing out through the mouth and softening the belly and then the third in breath squinching the muscles in the face really taut tight and any other muscles you want buttocks,

Fists,

Toes and then breathe out relaxing so we'll spend a few moments just settling in once again see if you can cultivate an awareness of the present-time sensations that is alert available attentive to whatever arises but doesn't get caught in thoughts Azzan Chah referred to it as taking the only seat in the mind so you're at a perhaps like a visitor center in the mind and you're sitting in the chair and various guests are arriving some of them are feelings some of them are thoughts some of them are memories some of them are random bodily sensations and they're all moving through this visitor center but none of them can take the seat your awareness is in that seat so the visitors have to simply be greeted met but none of them can claim control of the mind and if you just from the tendency to identify and collapse into thought if you get hooked by a thought and subsumed by an inner virtual reality constructed by the parts of the mind that create fantasy or memories don't judge it or get frustrated just bring yourself back to the only seat every time you wake up in a meditation it's a small version of enlightenment and self so be grateful for every time you wake from a thought so visualize a situation in life where there's a lot you need to get done time is a sparse commodity there's various different obligations to be met you feel a little bit under the gun but you're not going to be able to do anything there's various different obligations to be met you feel a little bit under the gun in terms of timetable schedules the pressures of expectations from others visualize yourself how you respond to those occasions where life feels slightly overburdened overwhelming or you could feel into an image of yourself being in an environment where people are asking of you a lot of different things bills need to be paid emails returned chores met and just feel into any sense of inclinations how you respond in those situations do you become extremely organized and do you become somewhat in control do you take everything on to yourself do you have a tendency to procrastinate what part emerges when you feel pressured by life when you feel people are expecting a lot from you what do you go into is it a people pleaser an efficient worker a take charge a caretaker who are you in that situation do you give too much of yourself do you shut down your empathy and just get things done see if you can connect with the type of feelings and thoughts and inclinations that drive you in a busy day either when you're working or dealing with a lot of different demands perhaps you're hustling for work you you so try to have a sense of the characteristics of this part this self state that we rely on in stressful times and have a name to distinguish your awareness from this part of yourself what would you call this part and again nothing critical I think it's best to simply come up with a name spontaneously without overthinking it it could be someone in your family who was the take charge someone you saw on TV just a random name or a name you were called as a child any identifier for this part you you I have a part I call the professor the person that prattles on about neuroscience and psychology as a way to deal with social situations that are foreign.

I need to constantly separate myself or my awareness from that part.

Kind of know it all part.

So while you have this part in mind,

See if you could be an interviewer and you're interviewing this part and you're really curious as JMo reminds us you're interested,

You're not judgmental,

This is not a harsh interview,

But you're there with yourself in that take charge or dealing with life or not dealing with life,

Whatever part you've identified,

And ask it what is your job?

And just in its own spontaneous response just allow that part of yourself to answer.

My job is to get things done or make sure that nothing,

The world doesn't fall apart or that.

My job is to feel safe.

My job is to make,

Deal with the rationalities of my boss and my co-workers.

My job is to keep the ship running.

What is this part's job?

And then a second question,

What do you believe would happen if you didn't do your job?

Would everything fall apart?

Would people become dangerous,

Unstable,

Like the child who has to be the caretaker in the family who believes that if she doesn't do her job the parents will,

The family will fall apart,

The parents will not stay together,

The parents will become dysregulated.

What do you believe will happen if you don't have this part doing its job?

What does this part believe will go wrong if it's not in charge?

Very often the workaholic believes that everything will fall apart.

The people believes or believes that the other,

The person in power,

The boss will become irrational and dangerous.

The entertainer part who has to keep everybody happy and fulfilled believes that nobody will like us if we're not entertaining.

Finally the third question will be is there any other way that these needs could be met other than the way you've been handling them?

And you're asking this part.

If you're frightened of everything falling to pieces perhaps instead of taking charge we could learn to delegate or again learn how to ask for help.

Would that work?

And of course the part will first say no,

Nobody's,

Everybody falls short,

They never meet my expectations,

Nobody knows what I know how to do it.

Just keep asking but couldn't we come up with a way,

Another way,

The part that wants to be a caretaker,

Could we share the burden with someone else or could we learn at times not to take care but to seek help ourselves?

We're planting the seeds.

We're alerting this part to the fact that we will in our role as awareness at times be asking it to step aside kindly and be relying on different behaviors in our lives.

So I ask my know-it-all part would it be possible at times to not know and simply ask and learn and not have to know the answers?

To be curious isn't that another way to deal with stressful situations?

Okay so let's put aside this manager and as we move through the day I would encourage you to connect with another manager who comes out in social situations when you don't know other people for example or who comes out when you're at a family gathering or who comes what part do you rely on when you feel comfortable at work or in daily life.

But we're now going to connect with a firefighter.

Very often firefighters and part managers work in tandem.

So now I'd like you to visualize a situation where you're really stressed out and your normal way of handling overwhelm,

Tension,

Chores,

Expectations isn't working anymore.

Where all your attempts to manage,

Take care of,

Take charge,

Be on top of it and you still feel overwhelmed and you still you've built up this physiological tension and you just feel like you can't contain it anymore.

It's all too much.

What part comes out then?

Does it rage?

Does it withdraw and isolate and crawl up in the bed?

Does it reach for a bottle of wine?

Does it run to food the solace of eating?

Does it go to a store?

The part that needs immediately to change the way it feels.

What does it rely on?

Does it take a pill?

Does it seek the company of anyone that will have us even if it means trading sex for intimacy?

And this part we're not always so proud of.

This part doesn't always look so good to the rest of the world so that when we name this part,

When we identify this part it's even more important than with the managers to name it in a kind compassionate way.

We can be clinical and name it the shopper,

The social media,

The TV watcher.

I prefer something more human.

Sometimes when I feel stressed,

Overburdened,

Overwhelmed,

I go to the local thrift store,

Buy a t-shirt I don't need.

I can call that part the thrifty.

I can call it dad because my dad did sometimes similar stuff.

So let's interview this part.

Again slightly from a detached perspective,

Interested,

Curious.

Right now I'm aware of that part of myself that just wants all the stress to go away.

No matter how I do it I just want it all to go away.

I want all the tension,

All the stress,

All the overwhelm in life to go away.

And the job of this part is to self numb.

So what is this part afraid will happen if I don't have that drink,

If I don't masturbate or shop or whatever it is I do,

What does this part believe will happen?

Will I explode?

Will I crumble into a puddle?

Will I become unglued or will my anger overtake me,

Swallow me up?

Will my fear consume me,

My loneliness?

What do I fear will happen if I don't have this drink?

Need met by this part.

Once again asking this part is there any other way we could cope in this situation where we feel overwhelmed,

Stressed out,

Where some feeling becomes so overwhelming we want to remove it.

If it's loneliness could we imagine going to a place where there are other people rather than just relying on Netflix or food.

If it's sadness perhaps we could do a self-soothing technique.

How can we meet the need to feel less overwhelmed,

Less consumed by our pain without needing to enact an addictive ritual?

So letting this part go and now finally we're going to go to the darkest corners of the mind.

We're going to ask that our managers and our firefighters just listen and of course they have their own fears of what will happen if we connect to the exiled wounded parts.

But just remind the mind that we're in a safe place,

We're supported,

We don't have to present or look good and that no one becomes destabilized simply by connecting with their needs.

So deep,

Deep buried in some corner is a frightened child,

A part of ourself that always felt unloved,

Untaken care of,

Abused,

Hurt by the things others said,

Wounded by being left behind,

A part that couldn't make sense of the world and just felt unwanted.

This part is simply felt.

It's been so disempowered that it probably doesn't have much impulses to it,

But if we tap into it it might want simply to cry or scream.

But our job is just to be there with it,

To find that most vulnerable frightened part of our experience that we've guarded ourselves against for so long,

Those dreaded feelings.

In other parts I want to repress,

Might want to jump in,

It might at first be simply difficult to connect with.

In my case it's a pure kind of fear of a child suddenly in the midst of adults acting violently,

So scared.

And just ask this part,

How can I make you feel safe?

How can I make you feel seen or heard?

What do you need?

Some of us might have a sense of this part and others might just feel walled off from it,

But just keep asking the habitual behaviors and beliefs to step aside and just find some underlying vulnerable feeling that we're generally afraid of touching into.

Just while you're connecting with this exiled part,

Relax your body as much as you can,

Create as much of a safe physical container for it.

No defensive tightening against it,

Relax,

Keep the shoulders dropped,

The belly soft and just be with,

If you can,

That part that feels the most wounded,

The most exiled.

What do you need to feel safe?

What have I forgotten to do to make you feel safe and heard?

And finally ask that part,

What is its favorite self-soothing behavior that we do?

What in life makes this part that is so lonely or so frightened or so angry feel that its needs are being met?

Is it when we go to our yoga class or ride our bike or swim?

Is it when we lie in bed and read a good book or go to the beach and lie in the sun?

Is it when we draw or play the piano or knit or what is its favorite way of being?

So letting go of this part and just bring to mind a visual of yourself at some time in your life when you needed love,

An image of yourself either as a child,

As a teenager alone for the first time in college,

A time of addiction,

A time when everything fell apart.

Just hold this part and just for a few moments repeat,

I love you,

Keep going.

I love you,

Keep going.

I love you,

Keep going.

I love you,

Keep going.

I love you,

Keep going.

So when you hear the sound of the bowl,

Again just open your eyes enough to take in the carpet or the ground before you,

Integrating light and color into whatever feelings you're still connected with,

What emotions,

What state of being.

So when you hear the sound of the bowl,

Again just open your eyes enough to take in the carpet or the ground before you,

Integrating light and color into whatever feelings you're still connected with,

What emotions,

What state of being.

Reviews

Very helpful to someone who has been resistant to IFS, as I felt somewhat overwhelmed by all the ‘parts’. This has opened me up more to its therapeutic value. I so want to help the wounded child. 🙏

More helpful than I can express 🙏 thank you so much 🙏

Josh Kurds is always informative and insightful. Great meditation.

Insightful. Really helpful to hear a different explanation of parts and a very valuable meditation that I’m going to return to practice. Thank you 🙏

I am grateful for this powerful and impactful experience. I love you, keep going. Thank you.

Lovely and informative

Very worthwhile

Outstanding. Compassionate, well sustained, lovely. Almost a bit rushed I guess. I have done parts work before, but being guided by Josh is priceless! ❤❤❤

This was an excellent talk! The speaker really explained things clearly, and was engaging and fun to listen to. It was a totally unique perspective on psychology/behavior that I've never heard before, and it really made a lot of sense. And I just really connected with his personality and energy, and am looking forward to hearing more of his material!

This enabled me to reach deep within. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and compassion.

Loovveeee🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻

Awesome explanation of different selves.

Very insightful .... helps to know oneself authentically, through my own eyes

Just what I needed! Currently, Doing work in therapy with my exiles, managers and firefighters around PTSD issues. Plan to re-listen to take notes! Thank you!

I've been feeling a little lost recently and struggling with "who I really am" It's so reassuring to hear that we all have multiple self states and that it is normal to flit around, but awareness of feelings is key. Lots of notes made to revisit. Thank you for sharing 💖

Very interesting talk with resources to check out (which I appreciate). I will listen to this again. Loved the concept of different ‘states’. Loved the humor, the honesty. Very thought provoking & a completely new way for me to look & identify with self. Thank you for sharing. 🙏🏼💞💫

Very insightful and helpful. Thank you. :-)

Unique. A lot to digest. Helpful method to begin to get in touch with and balance yourself. I am way left brain...so this is a great discussion and exercise for me. ☺💖

Really interesting talk - some laugh out loud moments - a good 40 minute meditation with a lovely ending ... I love you, keep going 💜 Brought tears to my eyes.

Thanks for this teaching.