During moments of extreme stress or trauma the
part of our brain that encodes memory is impaired such that when the trauma is recalled
it feels like it is happening again. That is why when we are triggered
we can suddenly feel overwhelmed. We are having what I call an emotional flashback.
The good news is we can learn to step back from, or unblend from, these experiences which
allows us to come back into the present. We all have parts of ourselves that were
wounded and never had a chance to heal. Now I use the word "part" here purposefully
because even those of us with the most wounding or with really painful internal
places we can fall into, even we are not defined by our wounds. They are
not all of who we are. Yes, hurt places are a part of us, parts that deserve care and attention,
but they are not the totality of our selfhood. We have more inside us than just our pain. This is
really important and why there's always reason for hope and that hope starts the moment we are able
to separate enough from the parts of us that hold our pain to make a little space for the deeper
or higher self. Which in the last video I was calling the true self or adult self, to step in. That is
a process that is called unblending and it is at the core of a type of therapy called Internal
Family Systems or IFS which this series is about. More specifically, in this video we will talk
about how the process of unblending can help with emotional overwhelm. Now you might be thinking
we already talked about unblending in the first three videos, but in the previous videos we really
only talked about unblending from what in IFS are called "protector parts," which are our habitual
ways of protecting ourselves like drinking or putting up walls or overworking. When we unblend
from a protected part it gives us a bit of space to step back from our powerful impulse to relate
to others or ourselves in a certain way. But in IFS there's a whole other part of our mind that we
need to step back from at times as well, or to use IFS language, a whole other type of part to learn
to unblend from, and those are our wounded parts. Unlike our protector parts which are there to
protect us from the pain, our wounded parts hold the pain itself. In IFS they actually call these
parts our "exiles" because so often we try to push them out of awareness or exile them. We bury
them somewhere so deep that we aren't always even aware that they are there. In fact, usually
the main job of our protectors is to protect us from being aware of our wounded parts or to
exile them. But why do we bury them in this way? Well because when they do come up and
when we become blended with our wound instead of our protector, what we
experience is emotional overwhelm. That is why learning to unblend from our wounded
parts, whether we call them the wound or the exile, is key to learning to come out of states of
overwhelm. But before we go on let me just make sure we're on the same page. The wounded parts
remember the ways we got hurt and still sort of hold that pain, while the protector parts remember
the ways we learn to protect ourselves and still hold the job of protecting us in that way. So
when we are blended with our protectors when it is they that are taking over, it feels a lot like
compulsiveness to act in a certain way. And when we are blended with our wound or exile, it feels a
lot like pain or fear or emotional dysregulation. We already talked about the science of protectors
in the last video so let's now talk about how we might bring that science to our
understanding of our wounded parts. That will really help us understand how to approach
the unblending process which will be so important for those of you who experience emotional
overwhelm. So like our protector parts, our wounded parts live in implicit memory as well but
they hold information around what we experienced, not just what was happening, but also how did
that feel in my body? Did I feel safe or connected? Was I alone or being threatened? Did I feel a sense
of worth, or rather, shame? Now interestingly, most of the time when we remember our lived experience
that is considered a form of explicit memory, specifically autobiographical memory. It's
explicit which means we can consciously draw it up and remember it like remembering what we
had for lunch yesterday. But here's the thing, our memories around traumatic or overwhelming
experiences are stored differently by our brain. That is because when we are in a moment
of extreme stress or fear or trauma, our way of encoding memory changes. Why? Because stress
hormones reduce the working of our hippocampus and it's the hippocampus that creates explicit memory.
And one of the hippocampus's most important jobs is to take what is happening, the thing we are
coding into memory and put a time stamp on it. Like when I think about graduating from high
school, I can say "yeah, that happened in 1999, that seems like a while ago. I mean it sort of
seems like yesterday, but not really, I can tell the difference between the memory that actually
happened yesterday and one from 22 years ago. But that is different from our experiences that
are held in implicit memory, where it's almost like they're always in the present tense. This
type of memory isn't so much like, "oh dad used to shame me and it was painful," it's more like
it feels like dad is shaming me right now. I mean, I might not have those words, but I once again will
feel that sense of worthlessness and aloneness. And why is it in the present tense? Well again,
because the hippocampus fails to do its job of time stamping very painful or traumatic memories,
and this means something very important. It means that when that type of memory is triggered it
feels as if we are reliving that experience again. It is happening now. By the way, this phenomenon
explains why people can have flashbacks. I mean flashbacks are sort of an extreme
version of what we were talking about, but it captures the idea. Maybe you've
heard of like a war veteran returning home and hearing a loud bang, like from
a firecracker and suddenly diving under the table. Right, it's even possible for them to actually
see the trauma scene or battlefield again, like it's really fully reliving. But I like using
that type of flashback as an example because most people know about them for one, and flashbacks
are a great example of how memory can come up in a way that the mind thinks it's happening again
now because the time stamp isn't on it. It's like the past isn't in the past. So to summarize, if
a hippocampus is offline when the memory forms, when we have that memory there isn't the sensation
of remembering. Usually this doesn't create as an extreme of a situation as visually hallucinating
that we're back somewhere else, but it's more of a somatic memory. So when our brain is
reminded of a very painful emotional moment and those same emotions I had are being triggered,
it's like they're called up in my body again. These are interesting and tricky emotional
moments for people because yes the experience of emotion is happening, but really it's the
emotion from the past. In other words, we are remembering an old emotion, but because it doesn't
have the sensation of remembering, it just feels like we're having that emotion in the present. It
feels like it's our current emotion or experience. This is very confusing and makes people
feel crazy. Like why am I overreacting in this way? What my husband said wasn't that
bad but suddenly I feel so sad and alone or scared or angry. I mean sometimes
just to make sense of our emotions we will tell ourselves that well what my husband
said must be pretty bad or else I wouldn't be feeling so bad, so it can color our perception of
what's going on, but usually we blame ourselves and just feel like "gosh, what's wrong with
me. Why am I being so sensitive or so crazy." But there's nothing crazy about it. It's just the
way the brain is wired. So what I tell my clients when they are very triggered is, "don't even think
of this emotion as your real emotion in a way. Think of it as your emotional memory.
I'm remembering a previous emotion. It's like your body is reliving what happened
before because something reminded you of the past. It's a strange thing but it really is just as
simple as having a memory. Something reminded you of the past and now you are reliving it." I mean we
could be overwhelmed about something happening in the moment, if some horrible situation is unfolding
or someone is being abusive to us, well then it's just our emotions in the moment to be scared or
hurt. But if someone maybe is just, I don't know, slightly challenging to us and suddenly we feel
terrified or shamed, then it's a good bet that we are going into what we might call an emotional
flashback. The good news is even just knowing about this phenomenon gives us better footing for
dealing with emotional overwhelm when it comes up. Why? Because in the moment your brain is
categorizing this experience as it being in the present but with confusion maybe exactly
where in the present this threat is coming from, it's like you want to help your brain out a
bit. It's like, "hey brain, you're having a memory" and your brain will listen to you or at least
have a better chance to begin to reorganize around how it is interpreting what is going on
and clarity does a lot in terms of helping our nervous system settle. The difficult thing about
these emotional flashbacks is not only are we having to deal with the pain that came from the
past but maybe we can't understand what's going on, like am I really in danger? I don't think so, but
I feel like I am, am I crazy? Like, what am I missing? You know, it's like there's no solution because
we don't even know what the problem really is. I just feel bad. And that type of confusion and chaos
makes the brain very anxious. So, the moment we can ever begin to step back from our reactions. see
them clearly, organize them, put them into words, anything like that which brings a little order,
will help our brain and body to settle. That's called "name it to tame it." That's really more a
general teaching point about psychology versus a point about IFS specifically, although IFS
works beautifully with this. But I just wanted to get the general science out around that first.
You know, pretty much any form of trauma therapy has some tools around this piece, this helping
the brain categorize the past from the present and step back from and organize the reactions,
just getting a little distance from them, so we can come back into the here and now. A friend
of mine recently told me she even has her clients look at their hands, you know, and notice how old
they look, you know maybe touch their wedding band, things that remind them that they're an adult now.
One of my favorite techniques is from Coherence Therapy called the "I'm in memory" exercise. I'll
link to a separate video about those techniques as well. But whatever approach you use, if I can
borrow IFS language, you could almost think of it as unblending from a memory. That being said, IFS
doesn't talk about unblending from a memory, they talk about unblending from a part. Why?
Well, because while calling it an emotional memory is descriptive, it doesn't hold that when
we relive something, it's more than just, I don't know, a moment in our life we're remembering or
even an emotion or experience we're remembering, we are in some ways becoming the person that lived
that experience. We're not only remembering what it felt like to be neglected, we're remembering what
it felt like to be neglected as a five-year-old. Maybe with the same sense of smallness perhaps or
helplessness. You know, possibly even with the same beliefs or way that our child self interpreted
what's going on like, "well I must not be worthy of love" and when we relive all those aspects at once
like that, we really almost are becoming that child again. So I think that is why in IFS they use the
word part, or being blended with the younger part, because if we just say we're having
a memory, even an emotional memory, it perhaps doesn't capture the complexity and
really tenderness of what we're talking about. Remember when we were talking about protector
parts and exploring the difference between calling them you know "behavioral adaptations"
or "learnings" versus calling them "parts," and how in using the word "part," it allows us to think
of them as almost like mini minds or like little people almost, in and of themselves, because we're
dealing with human consciousness. Well the same is true with the parts of us that remember the pain.
That neural net holds a pattern that is more than just emotion or more than just the memory
of what happened in the trauma, for instance. It's rather like a pattern of a living, breathing
human experiencing that trauma, you know the thoughts, feelings, visual input, how their brain
was processing it on every level in that moment. Also when we visualize not just the memory but
rather tune into the human inside that memory that in some ways still exists, it makes it easier
to have compassion for our wounded places. Feel the difference from just thinking, "oh, I'm feeling
the pain that I felt as a child" and saying, "oh, I'm being with my child self. I'm looking into
their eyes or seeing their posture or noticing the pain on their face." When we can visualize ourselves
as a child, or really whatever age we were when the trauma happened, the impulse really naturally
emerges to help them and take care of them, and the truth is, most the time we do the opposite, we stuff
our wounds, we put them in the closet never to bother us again. But that's like neglecting a child,
it doesn't allow the deeper healing to happen. We don't want our wounded parts or our exiles to
be exiled forever. However, we don't want to become blended with them either. Why? Because not only
is it painful for us when our exiles take over and we become flooded, that's very destabilizing,
not only is it a problem for us, it's not so great for the exile either. Why? Because while the wounded
places in us flood us because they're tired of being in the closet and being ignored and want
us to feel and hear their pain and address their needs, right, to get our attention, the second
they actually fully come online like that, at least in that kind of taking over or blending way,
they're only once again alone. That's because these memories are so powerful they really can
box out or overwhelm our other adult capacities. We've talked about this in relation to
our protector parts before. where they, when we're blended with our protectors, we have
no longer access to our true self, or what IFS would call our "big s self," but the same is
true with our exiles. When we are blended with any part of us, it makes it impossible to access
our full capacities and compassion and wisdom. And that is a problem because our exiles need our
full capacities and our compassion and our wisdom. Which means they need to be like here with us,
not in the closet where we are ignoring them, that's not healing, but also not up so close and
like screaming at us that we can't stay present. So we have to unblend first in order to put
them in kind of like a position where actual relationship can happen. That way they are no
longer alone. But let me pull this point out just a bit because we started this video really talking
about unblending for the sake of regulation, right? But in truth, once we have unblended, we've
opened the possibility for something so much deeper than simply regulation to
occur, and that is actual healing. Why is healing possible from this position?
Because we can connect, we can listen, we can undo this part's aloneness, which is really
the aloneness of some deep level of our heart. We can address the fears and the pain and let that
part know what happened wasn't his or her fault. That is our goal and intention. And if we want our
exiles to unblend it helps if they understand that goal and intention. So when you're overwhelmed, you
might begin by speaking with your wounded part. You might try saying "you're flooding
my body because you want me to hear you and yes, I want to hear you and find you,
but when you flood me I actually go away. So I'm going to ask you to step back a bit,
because only if you give me a little distance, can I actually show up for you." Or you might say
something like "hey overwhelming sadness, I see you. I need you to give me just a little space
though, not because I'm trying to push you back into the closet, because I want to be with you. I
know you need me so please let me show up for you." That's actually all our inner child part
wants, so when it hears that intention from us, it will step back and give us some breathing room.
So when you're overwhelmed you can talk to your exile like that. If you're having trouble doing
this alone then you might need someone to sit with you and lend you some of their true self-capacity,
so some safety can come online through them first and then that allows a bit more settling, so you
can find your bearings and take the next steps. But whether alone or with someone else, just like with
other unblending work, see if the part will let you locate it in your body or have an image emerge,
maybe of a certain age or a certain scene. Either a metaphorical scene, like, I see a little girl
alone in some black space or in a corner. Or an actual scene, like I'm alone in my bedroom
because my parents never paid attention to me. As the image emerges it can shift from reliving
being alone in that bedroom, toward visualizing it or sensing it in some other way it doesn't
have to be visual. But the moment you have some way of tuning into it it's like if you visualize
the bedroom, you see how you're no longer in the bedroom. It's not like on the screen of your mind's
eye. So you can be watching the part that's there, rather than being the part. Even if you decide
to enter that bedroom and connect with that part, you're still there to offer support to
your part, rather than becoming your part. And that is the next step that needs to unfold.
It's an important next piece where you can allow yourself, when your part is ready, to actually
connect to support the exile like the girl in the bedroom, let's say. And how you know if you're ready
is you ask yourself or your therapist will ask you, "how are you feeling toward that part?" Remember
that's always the question to ask to make sure unblending has fully occurred, because once
you've unblended from apart and no other parts have jumped in to fill with space, the answer
will be something along the lines of loving or compassionate or I just want to help. And by the
way, if another voice does jump in like, "I'm scared of that little girl. I just want her to stop crying,"
that just means another protector has stepped in and you just need to do the work around unblending
from a protector first. That's all the work we talked about in the last video. And you do that
because you don't want to try to heal an inner child part from another protector part, because
those protector parts can't really bring healing energy, maybe managing energy, but not
anything that's actually going to be healing. Healing can actually only come from our true self.
And again, we know we're in true self and we check how we're feeling towards the wound and there's
just some sense of strength, compassion, empathy. In that moment, when our deepest self is
finally in connection with our deepest pain, that is a powerful moment. Why? Because love
and resource and connection are what heals, and that is what our adult
self can give to our child self. When the young part of us can feel the adult
inside begin to come into her world as a safe other, everything changes. You see, typically wounds
happen when we are alone and don't have sufficient support, particularly when we are dealing with
more childhood wounds. Those parts lived in a world where there was no kind, strong adult, sufficient
to protect them or help them understand what was going on or to offer care and compassion. But
now there is. Why? Because we are that adult now. Our adult self can go toward and listen to
and rescue and really heal our childhood wounds. So now that we've unblended, clearly the next
step is to have in a healing encounter with our wounded part, what might that healing look like
or feel like? That is a question we will answer in the next video, so please stay with us. Thank you
for watching. I hope you found this video helpful, and if you did, you can help me out by liking
and subscribing. Or if you're a therapist who would like to train with me while earning ceus,
you can visit my website at toriolds.com
