Multiplicity of the Mind: An Approach To Healing the Inner Self | Dr. Richard Schwartz X Rich Roll

been at it 40 years yeah we're still finding parts that need to be healed but it's natural ask these questions of that place in your body and wait for the answers to come do you have something you want to explore um [Music] my guest today is a psychotherapist who created a very interesting and effective therapeutic modality called internal family systems or ifs it's quite a radical shift in Paradigm you left all that in the past not realizing you were locking away exileing your most precious qualities Dr Richard Schwartz Dick Schwartz Dick Schwartz ifs yeah it's incredible big shorts and stuff maybe some of these parts are bad can we not label that as something pernicious that we need to you know override and and and overcome you can but it hasn't been working that well he has authored several books on the subject including you are the one you've been waiting for this conversation explores Dr Schwartz's many parts multiplicity of Mind model this is a real inner family that we we all live with it's like your external family if you neglect them we discuss how ifs operates to address various conditions addiction trauma depression and intimacy this exchange has really stuck with me I find myself thinking about myself my parts and why I do what I do a little bit differently quite differently as a matter of fact as a result of this conversation and I suspect after listening you may as well so without further Ado this is me and Dr Richard Schwartz thank you so much for coming here today I've been looking forward to this for a very long time and as I mentioned to you just prior to recording um I followed your work for some time uh you've appeared on a number of podcasts that I listen to regularly so I'm familiar with your work but what really locked in in interest in in in getting you on the show was a lunch that I had with with my friend wrong and Chatterjee I was in London last year and we met up and had a meal and he just couldn't stop talking about ifs and his experience with you and he's like you got to listen to the podcast that I did with Richard and he was raving about how beneficial um your work your methodology has been in his own life and uh and uh and so that that was really kind of like you know stayed with me and then you know when I I don't know who reached out but when you were making yourself available um I was very glad to you know have the experience to talk to you today so thank you well it's very mutual I'm a fan and I like I told you I I love what you're doing for the culture and just happy to support it and and uh yeah I had a real a good time with him yeah yeah he's a good dude indeed yeah so um why don't we you know start off with the obvious question which is what is internal family systems ifs set the stage and and and explain your perspective um on your particular modality of treating people okay uh what it is it began as a form of psychotherapy and it's kind of expanded to being more like a life practice or a way of understanding human beings that's a bit of a different paradigm and uh you know the basic assumption is none of us are unitary personalities that it's the nature of the mind to have lots of different what I call Parts but other people call other names ego States things like that some personalities that it's natural and that those parts are all valuable so I wrote a book no bad parts I've been doing this 40 years and I've done it with people who've done heinous things and even those parts if you listen to their secret history will reveal how they're just stuck in a place in the past and they're trying to best to protect the person and they carry this energy of their perpetrator and so on so in that sense it's quite a radical shift in Paradigm right given that the conventional traditional uh psychological Paradigm is one of mono mind as opposed to this multiplicity of Minds that is kind of the the pathway into understanding your perspective yeah and uh when I started talking about multiplicity the big paradigm was from what's now called the did uh literature which would be multiple personality disorder originally and they would acknowledge the existence of these what they called altars but it was thought that they were fragments of the broken vase that you were initially unitary and then trauma produced all these fragmented personalities that took on a life of Their Own and uh so I've been fighting that Paradigm for a long time too because for me they pre-existed the trauma and then they got into extreme roles because of the trauma sometimes just because they were trying their best to keep you safe when you were young when it happened but um they they exist they're real it's not the product of the trauma so in other words there are there is this I guess for lack of a better word immutable there's an immutable self and ancillary to that immutable self are all of these parts that are swimming around and they're they're in relationship with each other and they're they're performing various roles depending upon things that happen to you Etc um and and and and your your way of kind of approaching this and trying to understand it is premised on on a systems approach like trying to understand it like a technology or like code right so walk me through that aspect of it and then I kind of want to understand how you even arrived at this good idea to begin with yeah so uh I had a couple big advantages coming into it one is I have a PhD in Family Therapy and I was one of these obnoxious family therapists that thought we'd discovered the Holy Grail and people were mucking around in the inner World we're wasting their time because we could change all that by just reorganizing these family systems explain sorry sorry to step on you but like explain family like what does that mean when you say family families family systems therapy is um so if you're working with the acting out kid for example you assume that that kid isn't just whatever diagnosis he carries but that in some ways he's serving a function in the family of distracting or he's trying to protect himself from something that's happening in the family and that our assumption was we could reorganize the family and try to improve whatever relationships we're producing as symptoms and that he would stop doing that and a lot of times that that worked but as this family therapist I was determined to prove that I was in a department of Psychiatry and decided to do an outcome study with eating disorders because my hero at the time was a guy named Salvador mnuchin who would use his structural family therapy with anorexia and claimed a lot of success so I was gonna do it with bulimia and found to my dismay that we could reorganize the families just right and still a bunch of my kids didn't realize they'd been cured and they kept going how dare they I know right so this is sort of an external family systems model right right organize the people around the person Afflicted with the condition you're trying to treat that's right and and resolve uh with with uh less than Stellar results is what you're saying yeah and then out of frustration I began to ask these kids why are you still doing it and they started talking this very weird language to me at the time talking about these different parts of them and how they were doing all this stuff inside and so you know an example would be something happens in my life it triggers this critic who's brutal and makes me feel horrible and that brings up a part that feels young and empty and alone and worthless and that feeling is so distressing that then this binge comes in to get me away from it but the the bench triggers the critic again who's calling me a pig on top of the other names and that goes right to the heart of that empty worthless young one so the the bench has to come back I was lucky I had a couple clients who were extremely articulate about that whole thing and at first because I didn't know from Parts at first I thought these kids are sicker than I thought maybe they have multiple personality disorder and then I listened inside myself and oh my god I've got them too and I've got this critic and I can binge on food sometimes and other things and I have a piece of worthlessness in there and so then I calmed down and got really curious and just started to ask a lot of questions about how do they relate to each other and how does it work in there and you know I was lucky that I hadn't studied any psychoanalytic or psychodynamic therapies so I did I came with fresh eyes right like a beginner's mind I was just going to say that so I really had to trust what they were saying about the phenomena and that's partly why this is different I think than a lot of things both that and the systems frame where rather than just focusing on one part trying to figure it out I was really trying to understand the way this whole network operated as a system and that's what we go to change we're trying to change the whole network rather than just one at a time right I think it is a universal condition of Being Human that we understand we have different voices in our head and you know I I you know I I don't think you have to be afflicted by anything particular or acute to relate to the idea that sometimes you feel worthless sometimes you feel better than somebody else sometimes you feel judgmental or hard on yourself in a way that you you know is disproportionate whatever's happening or you know self-esteem like the the list is endless right so within that there's this inner monologue that we all have about the relationship between the person we think we are or the person we wish we were and how that relates to all of these other you know kind of voices that are criticizing us or urging us to do this or that which either are in parallel or orthogonal to that you know sense of of who we think we are or want to be exactly and my contention is these aren't just Little Voices or thought patterns or emotions those are the manifestations of these parts but if I were to have you focus on one of them exclusively for a second and get curious about it and just ask you'd find out that it's a full range personality that really has a lot to tell you but besides the little thought it's giving you and that it's stuck in an extreme role often if it's an extreme part because of something that happened in your childhood maybe or uh yeah and that through trial and error over time we found out how to help all these parts change and to actually leave their extreme roles and become who they're designed to be so that's the goal of the model was there yeah was there like a light bulb moment though in terms of how you started to think about the lattice work or the the relationship between all of these like how does the systems because it just seems so murky and and hard to get your hands around like what is actually going on like how do you overlay this um with some sense of organization or or kind of I don't know um uh you know animating kind of unifying principle you know it's really interesting because as we talk about it it seems murky but if I was to have you focus inside you would start oh there is this one over here and there's this other one over here and it becomes far less murky you can actually map it all out and we actually help people do that um and yeah the it's just so rare for people to do it people do it through mindfulness and they'll notice their thoughts and emotions but for me it's not compassionate to watch suffering beings parade by possibly so this is mindfulness plus it's like get mindful and then go to them and help them and hold them and show them you care about them and they will start to relax and you know most it turned out after many years of doing this that most of these parts are quite young and yet they're still running your life it's like in Family Therapy we had a concept we call parentified Child a child who was forced to be a parent because the parents had abdicated and couldn't handle it but still tried to do it and many of these parts are like that they're they're much younger they're often like I said Frozen in time and in bad times in your life where they got stuck they think you're still five years old they think they still have to protect you the way they did back then and they carry something I'm going to call burdens that carry extreme beliefs and emotions that came into you in that moment and attached to these parts and drive them like a virus and the coronavirus act actually so a lot of the healing is helping them let go of these extreme loose emotions get him out of where they're stuck in the past I want to dig into that in a in a very specific way in particular the various roles that these parts take on and why they take them on but you mentioned mindfulness and this idea of mindfulness plus like mindfulness is where your presence and in a in a place of of awareness and noticing so you can be aware and non-judgmental as these you know kind of ideas or voices are kind of passing through your Consciousness and depending upon the modality of of mindfulness that you practice or at least in certain strains of of meditation there's a different idea at play which is the more Buddhist notion of of no mind right like this idea that that you know in a non-dualistic sense like there is no self there is just Consciousness right and that is very different from what you're saying which is there is a self there is this self that lies within us like this kernel I guess with all these orbiting you know asteroids and planets that sometimes Collide into the self that are the respective parts so before we get into the parts is it is it the case from your perspective that that that that you know I said immutable before like we all have some self within us that is unchanging since birth and is that the case for every person and how did you arrive at that notion yeah so and and just to clarify what Buddhists call no self or like you said no mine is what I call self the it's semantic yeah now we're getting conf it's going to get confusing I'll just try to explain it real quick so what you find and this is what I'm about to describe is that as you get these parts to separate inside it releases this person who you know when I say what what is that that knows how to heal your parts you would say well that's me that's not these parts so I came to call that the self for that reason but what the Buddhists call Self is really these parts so as they open space it's who's left which is the emptiness that's so full so it's really the same idea really yeah um trying to understand that I think I understand what you're saying um I think we all uh like if we spend enough time looking at somebody who behaved badly and that person was willing to open up about why they you know do what they do um that you will develop an understanding like it will make sense if you understood the you know like the their life history and the context in which you know that behavior developed over time it would all be very black and white right like it's it's very much in line with Gabor mate's work I think and I think you've done some stuff with him like there seems to be a lot of parallels here in the sense that um it's about really looking at the why behind the symptom that's right like why is this person doing this tracing it back to something that happened in in their childhood Etc um to try to make sense of it rather than let's let's just malign it or or repress it or pretend it doesn't exist and focus on you know moving forward and and these other behaviors like strengthening you know the more positive behaviors yeah which is sort of the culture's approach to these things and a lot of therapies too so this is quite the opposite it's again saying they're all good um they're forced into these extreme roles but if you just take the time to start to get curious and listen to them they'll tell you their secret histories of how they got hurt so it isn't like I have to figure out where it happened in the past I'm working with you and you're working with maybe your angry part not that you have one but and it's it's in there okay and I'm having you focus on it and asking it about itself and also asking what it's afraid would happen if it didn't get so angry sometimes and answering that you would learn that it it really is desperately trying to protect you and that it's protecting some other part of you that's quite young and vulnerable and we would negotiate permission to go to that one and there's a process by which we would heal that but all of that I would be doing when you were in what I call Self so to come back to your original question which is how did I Stumble onto that so I was learning about these parts and I'm a family therapist so as I took started taking them more seriously um I'm trying to get my client to relate to them differently and it took a while for me to get that they aren't what they seemed because at first I thought the critic was and the field still does some kind of internalized parental voice the binge was some kind of out of control impulse when you think of that way it makes sense to fight with a critic or ignore it or to try and control the binge but if you think of them as I learned ultimately that they're just really good parts that got forced into these Extreme Rules and they're just trying their best to keep you safe then you come to them with curiosity first and ultimately compassion and you can wind up honoring them for their service like you might the military these protective parts and they love that and as you do that and change these internal relationships they'll start to change too and but to get back to the original story so once I got hip to the fact they aren't what they seem they deserve to be listened to I'm trying to get my client to do that and are so maybe I'm having my client talk to that critic inside and it's going pretty well but suddenly she's furious with the critic and it reminded me of family sessions where I'm I'm trying to have two people maybe a critical mother and a teenage girl talk to each other about their relationship it's going okay suddenly the girl gets furious with the mother we were taught to look around the room and see if somebody isn't subtly siding with the girl against the mother and often maybe the father is and so we were taught to get that person out of her range of vision and create a better boundary around the two of them and that she the girl would settle down and they would have a decent conversation and I thought maybe the same thing's happening in this inner World maybe as my clients trying to get to know this critic the part who hates the critic has come in is doing the talking it's hard to say to Clarence can you find the one who's so angry the critic and get it to just relax in there until we're done just ask it to give us a break here and to my amazement clients could do that pretty readily most of them and when they did it I'd say now how do you feel the CR toward the critic it would be some version of I'm just curious why it calls me names the seconds earlier they hated it or maybe they were terrified of it the simple Act of getting these parts to open space seemed to release this other person who Not only was just curious but also was calm and confident and even compassionate sometimes like I'm sorry that it has to do this right to get them to get that self to disengage with those parts that are impulsing words and behavior that are non-productive to the the kind of healing path that you're trying to get them on yeah and and the the big deal about ifs is that suddenly this other person that I came to call the self would emerge spontaneously it wasn't like we had to build up the muscle of compassion or anything like that it was really just opening space and it was uncovered it just came out and then in that state the dialogue with the critic or any other part would go well because what now this is 40 years later and thousands of people later using this and we can pretty safely say that that self is in everybody can't be damaged knows how to heal and is just beneath the surface of these parts such that when they open space it pops out hmm the untarnished self that has always been there since conception or whenever you believe Consciousness arises that then gets painted in various Colors by Dent of the way these parts kind of emerge over time but what I like about it is the non-pathologizing kind of approach like instead of naming these things with you know terms and words that make us feel bad about ourselves or you know are in alignment with some kind of diagnosis it's understanding that all these parts are actually good faith actors like they're they're operating in what they believe to be the best interest of the self but they're out of they're just out of alignment like they're extreme in their role or because of the interplay between you know different different parts creates a non-optimal situation for that self to be expressed in the way that it could be otherwise yeah um like most these parts got their roles when you were too young to protect yourself and so they think you're not able to do that and so they have to do it for you and so as one of the things we do often is is just I would have you ask that angry one why how old it thinks you are and you'll get a single digit most of the time and then I'll say just update it a little bit and see how it reacts and sometimes they're amazed that you're you know a grown man who can protect himself now and can take care of them they don't have to take care of you in that same way yeah they they didn't get the newsletter update no exactly they're still operating like you're a five-year-old right and they're still frozen in time back in that scene right so so that just um you know one of the goals is to help these parts revert to their naturally valuable States second goal is for them to trust self as a leader to learn they don't have to do it all because there's this other person in there that can do it for them um yeah I've got a lot of questions about that but but let's get into the various roles that these parts can play you have a couple categories to help us understand that Exiles managers and and firefighters so can you walk me through yeah so again I'm a systems guy and as I'm hearing about all this I'm looking for distinctions and patterns that's what systems people do and the big distinction that emerged immediately was between these parts that uh we're very vulnerable and hurt and then the parts that protected them so that's really the big distinction and as I got to know that uh the first class other sisters would call Inner children so they're they're young and sensitive but when they're not hurt they're playful and loving and open and creative and wonderful and we love them I mean we don't really know them but we love having them around but they're the most sensitive parts so they're the ones who get hurt the most by the slings and arrows or by the bad parenting or by the traumas and once they do they take on what I call burdens like emotional pain or worthlessness and shame or Terror from the event and now they're not so much fun to be around because they have the power to overwhelm us and pull us back into those memories and make it so we can't function very well so we kind of naturally try to lock them away and in her basements or a business and try our best to stay away from them and everybody around us tells us to do that because this is a rugged individualist culture and so you probably got the message many times just move on don't think don't look back you can't change what happened and so you did you left all that in the past thinking you were just moving on from the memories or the emotions not realizing you were locking away exiling your most precious qualities just because they got hurt and so once you get a lot of Exiles like that you feel more delicate the world seems more dangerous because so many things could trigger them and again if they get triggered it's like flames of emotion overwhelm you and take you out so you have this sort of unconscious fear that drives you to avoid those types of situations so that you're not back in that place yeah what's interesting about that though you use the word Exile like when I was trying to understand what you meant by that um you know for me like trying to recollect some of those incidents in in my own life and how I you know moved forward or failed to move forward in in the healthiest way um I almost feel like those parts are not necessarily in Exile but perhaps too present like what I've actually exiled are all the memories or experiences where you know somebody made me feel good or affirmed me or told me that I was worthy or that I should keep going or you know gave me encouragement or or mentorship and instead you know you kind of lock onto those negative experiences that occur and you create narratives around them that end up driving your behavior well into adulthood so have I not just haven't I exiled like all the good things and and overly you know emphasized these you know sort of you know a few incidents and and turn them into much bigger deals than they should be yeah there are parts that do that so what I was calling the critic has a habit of doing that and for various reasons we can get into that it doesn't want you to feel good about yourself and so it will lock away any information that counters its narrative like you said of who you are and how bad you are or how nobody likes you or how dangerous the world is and but if I were to have you focus on that part get curious about it ask what it's afraid would happen if it didn't do that job you there's one of three different answers you commonly get either it's trying to keep you small so that you don't shine and get hurt or it's trying to motivate you like you said to work harder and do better and given your life that's probably the one or um I can't remember the third but yeah well I think I checked both those boxes yeah yeah yeah for sure well I mean we can you know we can get into all my all my voices and all my in all my parts but certainly uh there is there is uh you know a voice that's telling me you're not you know you're not you're not good enough and you and you have and the the love and acceptance that you seek uh can only be earned through accomplishments and you know external validation Etc of course like you never quite get there you can chase that forever and I have my theories about why I feel that way um but that critic is is definitely you know powerful and I had the same part I came out of my family um I'm the oldest of six boys and my father was a very prominent physician researcher and I was supposed to be that and I had 80d so I wasn't a good student and it drove him crazy and and three of my brothers are big time physician researcher types and so I came out of that relationship with a lot of burdens of worthlessness because he gave me that message directly or indirectly many times and with that burden of worthlessness the part who carries that would be the Exile that I tried to get away from all the time but there is also a Critic who is saying echoing his voice and is trying to to goad me into achieving to counter the worthlessness and to constantly get more and more achievements and ifs wouldn't exist if that wasn't true because right I wouldn't that's what makes it so difficult to overcome right because this is on some level of superpower it's an unsustainable one and it's not a healthy one right but to ask somebody to let go of that or disentangle themselves from that is a threat you know that probably activates another part which is saying if you let go of that then this whole house of cards is going to cave on top of itself because this is what you know this is the this is what you're you know this is where your drive that's right and I totally bought into that until various circumstances made me actually do the work and I'm here to tell you that um it's probably been 20 years but that critic has got a totally different job that Exile worthlessness is all unburdened and I'm still cooking it's not it didn't yeah yeah and actually what job does a Critic have now let me let me finish actually it's much more effective because I'm a much better leader I'm leading from what we call self now and so part of what happened was you know I that critic leaks out toward other people and so I when I became the leader of a community it wasn't helpful I was alienating people and polarizing and so I was lucky I had people come and say you you got to do your work and so having done that now the critic you got to walk your own walk you gotta walk around walk yeah and the critic is now he helps me discern what's good and valuable and like this podcast and what I should stay away from he's just a discerner and the former uh worthless part the shame part now is a playful little guy and so I don't ever anymore I can say this honestly it drives my wife crazy because um she feels like I should yell at myself a lot more than I do but I really don't I don't hear that nagging critical voice anymore um the shame uh piece I think is is huge for a lot of people it certainly is with me and it's you know on my list of of you know voices in my head deep shame for things I've done in the past that I can't change that I'll fixate on um and how that relates to you know all these other aspects of of you know all these other parts in my personality you know that love is conditional and based on accomplishment Excellence is mandatory you're never going to be good enough um and when you fall short it's more than guilt it is a feeling of of Shame like that you uh that that drives that sense of worthlessness um and you know in my case it links up with you know an imposter syndrome meets you know perfectionism control issues and and uh and also like a big you know big part is is is fear like Dread like you should be very afraid catastrophe is just around the corner it's only a matter of time you know before they find out that you don't know what you're doing and they're gonna pull the mic away from you and lock you up for good yeah I appreciate your disclosure about all that and uh what I can say is that you're not alone there's many people who and I was that way and shame is a is a real motivator because shame and worthlessness especially when you're a child and you get that message is terrifying because we're born as children knowing that if my parent doesn't like me and thinks I'm worthless I'm gonna die and many children all over the world die because their parents don't value them so whenever you have that burden it's going to be very motivating to get away from or it's gonna you know shut you down so you don't even try so you're right it's a shame is a really um powerful burden yeah so in addition to the the Exiles we also have the managers and the firefighters and you know I I tend to kind of look at these things through my own experience with addiction and Recovery as just kind of a operating you know example of how to illustrate this but it seems to me that yes I've you know I've exiled these certain parts of myself um and you know the firefighters are are the kind of extreme parts that flare up when you get really threatened in a very particular way and in the case of of substance abuse that turns into you know kind of like the binges that you were talking about right that allow you to disassociate with whatever pain that that scenario or situation was producing generally unconsciously in the person and then recovery is sort of a process of having the manager take over and get everybody in line so that you can function as a you know responsible human being in the world well that is the current state of the art of addiction work is to get the manager to sit on the firefighter as well as the exile I'm trying to change that because I'm trying to help people in the addictions world actually listen to and value the firefighters even though they've ruined their lives they're really just trying to protect and then learn what they protect and heal that and then help those firefighters out of their extreme roles are rather than trying to control them all the time because you know either you don't succeed and you just feel worse and worse because you're not you're still binging you can't do your recovery or you do succeed and then you become something of a dry drunk who's got to be careful all the time to not have that get triggered again and so the alternative is to go to these firefighting addictive parts and like I said learn about what they're protecting and heal that and then they so they they change they take on new roles so it's a different Paradigm for understanding addiction yeah it is uh and it's it's uh it's provocative for me to hear that because I am you know a product of of traditional 12-step and um it's benefited me in miraculous ways so maybe I can push back a little bit and then you can give me your your response to that um I think there's a difference between between recovery and abstinence and the dry drunk scenario is a is a you know would fall into the into the abstinence category but if you're properly working these these tools um you are uh you know you you are then moving to a place of of peace with yourself yeah um that I think transcends that that dry drunkness and and you know allows you to function I totally in your yeah like so you you there is like a um it's more than a Armistice with your parts like there is a there is a a relationship with them of of understanding I guess right yeah I overstated my case because I'm really trying to bring something different but uh 12 step is great at certain things I heard you talk to somebody recently about how it de-shames people just being able to disclose what you're feeling ashamed of and have a group be very accepting of that and talk about their own so there is a certain amount of healing your Exiles that takes place in that context and then that makes the job of the firefighter that much easier I mean less intense it can actually Stand Down better and it also gets the critic off your back who's before you did the 12-step was saying you're the only one you're the only one who can't control it you're just bad and now sees that it's so common and so yes I there's a lot of benefit to 12 step I didn't mean to right so is there is there uh a logic in in your approach in combination with 12-step yes application is sort of like mindfulness plus sort of 12-step Plus on top of it like they're they can work in parallel that's right I'd say the only difference uh at least in the beginning is to change the view of the addictive part to really listen to it and honor it for its service like you might the military rather than see it as as the enemy right to try to understand this was a this was an aspect of or I was going to say an aspect of yourself but you see it this is a part that is being activated to protect you in a certain situation because it felt that you were under threat and with that we can be compassionate about why that you know that that that part you know flares up and it's firefighter role from time to time because it it really did have your best interest at heart and it didn't realize that it was actually harming you yeah so as you start to do that and you change your relationship with that part and even before you've healed what drives a just letting it know you you understand it better and you can see how it's really trying to help even though it's not sometimes and that it's stuck in the past just that shift in relationship the part starts to relax a lot and then if you get triggered and you have that big impulse right away you can just remind it I know you're trying to take care of me right now but just trust me I don't need that right now and and you'll find a lot more cooperation inside because you have this sort of loving relationship with the part that ordinarily you were really you know afraid of or angry at feels very esoteric I'm imagining myself in a situation of vulnerability where suddenly there's an overwhelming you know kind of craving or desire and as they say and you know the parlance of 12-step like the Train's already pulled out of the station like you're already in a crisis at that point like I don't know that a conversation with that part at that point would be adequate uh mute that incredibly powerful overriding impulse it wouldn't in the current state of the art so but if you've worked on it and you've built this whole new relationship with it and it knows you now and it knows it doesn't have to protect you in that same way then you have that that c word choice in the moment much more than you you do when it just acts automatically and and uh does its its job that way yeah I think one qualitative difference between your approach and 12-step would be uh the the value in peering into your past and trying to understand it like there is this sort of premise in in traditional recovery models that it doesn't necessarily matter why you are an alcoholic or became an alcoholic like you can cast your gaze into your past and and try to Grapple with that and maybe you come up with an answer maybe you don't but right here today uh this is what you need to worry about and here are the things that you can do very practical tools that can keep you on the rails and and move you in a better direction as opposed to your perspective which is it's all about what happened to you in the past and rather than than you know averting your gaze there being curious about it and really exploring it helps you to have not only a better understanding of the driving forces uh that led you to behave in this way but to make peace with them and to be in in relationship with them uh in in an honoring way almost right yeah so that they don't act out yeah and to what I call unburdened these parts that are stuck in the past in and you know in contrast to maybe psychoanalysis or other kinds of more cerebral Therapies I wouldn't be having you try to figure out and go through your history from a rational place and try to identify the key trauma in your life I would have you focus on the pain or the shame or the terror or the sense of rejection or or you know just the what you described earlier the part of you that feels like why would anybody want me and I would have you find it in your body and I would have you just ask these questions of that place in your body and wait for the answers to come rather than think of the answer so it's a very different approach and people start to see themselves often as a child stuck in a bad situation in the past or a whole series of bad situations and then I would say how do you feel toward that boy and if you were himself you'd say I feel sorry for him I want to help him a lot of times you'd say well he's a wimp I you know I just he was too weak he shouldn't have gotten hurt like that so I said can we get that part to give us a break and so we can actually help him and get him out of where he's stuck so it's it's a much more limbic kind of emotional uh experience than trying to figure it out from this cerebral part yeah is is that how is that different from inner child work is it different just because you're recognizing all of these parts and their interplay that's one of the differences is I'm seeing this as an ecology and so for example before I would have you go to that boy I would have you work with the part that doesn't want you to go there and I was afraid you'd be overwhelmed by what he feels and I would spend time going over those fears and I would be addressing those fears and getting permission before I went because I learned the hard way that if I just had you go to that inner child and you did feel overwhelmed these protectors will backlash and they'll they'll make you feel terrible and ruin our relationship so that's how it's an ecologically sensitive model um I'm both working with these protectors beforehand and getting permission and then having them come in to see the change after afterwards so that's all one difference the other bigger difference is in what I call Self so that yeah there's a lot of people that do inner child work they're the one the therapist is doing the talking to the inner child and the child is forming a relationship with a therapist that can be healing I'm not trying to say it's not healing but for me it's better if yourself is the one to take care of that child and get it out of where it's stuck so the child comes to trust you as uh it's the attachment figure or you know the good parent inside rather than me right right um how does this operate in other contexts Beyond addiction I mean I know there's a there's a variety of of of different conditions in which you've had a lot of success so maybe we could talk about like let's just talk about depression like how is that have you have you noticed because you're a systems guy like okay in addiction here's what it kind of always looks like with everyone between the cacophony of these various parts and the roles they're taking on like what does it look like with depression with depression so again you've got an exile who's very hurt or very sad and uh the protector is trying to keep you away from it and depression usually there's a part that kind of numbs you out and flattens you out so you don't have much affect and it's really really afraid of that Exile it's afraid of of the pain that would overwhelm you and so it makes you kind of apathetic and inert a lot of the time and then you've got the critic who's nailing you for being depressed and why can't you get over it why can't you just get out there and so it's it's a version of that and uh yeah we have a lot of good luck with depression so untangling that knot involves a variety of conversations with these various parts and and getting them to retreat or chill out basically yeah um getting them to buy in you know I'm what I call a hope Merchant so if I went to that flattening part of you I would say You Know Rich ask what it's afraid would happen if it lets you feel much and it would say you'd be overwhelmed and you'd be pulled into the abyss and I can't let that happen okay if we could heal that so it wasn't such a threat would you have to keep him so flat and the part would say no but I don't think you can do that if I thought you could do it I wouldn't be doing this because they none of them like their jobs I'm so could you give me a chance to prove that we can because we can heal that part so you don't have to do this job you can be freed up to do something entirely different do you then uh give give those parts a new job like a specific new job like don't you have to direct that energy into something specific no I would say Rich ask this flattening part what it would like to do instead if it really didn't have to do that you'd be amazed at the answer it's often the opposite it wants to get you out and give you a lot of Life yeah so I don't have to assign any jobs we just where the concept is they're all valuable they got stuck in these roles and we're allowing them to return to their naturally valuable States the more I learn about this work that you do and the more I'm I'm cognizant of the various parts and how they're impulsing me in in various ways the more I realize you can kind of see it in other people too especially people you know well like when they're behaving in a certain manner if you know them well enough you can almost see like oh that that's that piece that's not really their that their self their their activated right now for this reason or that reason so I can imagine that there's a lot of benefit in in uh in the context of intimacy here right this new book that you have um you you are the one is really all you're the one you've been waiting for is really kind of all about that like in a couples therapy context having uh a shared understanding of each other's parts and how they how they function can be extremely beneficial in creating healthier communication because we're all anybody who's been in a relationship like you you get your buttons get pushed or you you know you say something they say something and then you're reacting to the various parts as opposed to seeing the self you know beneath all the activity that's kind of you know hanging over the whole dynamic that goes sideways yeah exactly so on a good day you know I'm a guy and I trigger my wife and she's Italian so she's got this big Angry part and um it's startling to me because it would remind me of my father when he would get so angry and it would originally hurt these little parts that were hurt by my father and so I would come back with try to match that energy and we would have these big fights and it wasn't always you know she's probably gonna listen to this so I I want to clarify I wasn't always her that started um but now both of us can kind of say okay I can see she's in that part and when you're in what I call self it's like you have X-ray vision as you can see behind the protector to the Exile that's driving the protector you can actually have compassion in the face of the anger and if I can stay in self and not take the bait and not you know because self is contagious and protectors are contagious so if I react from a protective part it's going to escalate and we're both going to get more and more extreme if I can like I said see the pain that's driving her stay in self and speak in this very different voice she'll calm down pretty quick and again I want to make us clear it's both ways and yeah so that's one very valuable aspect of ifs and couples but let me go back to something I was saying earlier because most of us come into relationships with this exiled part that feels worthless and is looking to our partner or feels terrified is looking to our partner to take care of that part of it right right right and our partners can't do that and our partner at some point will trigger those same Parts in the same way and we might even be looking for a partner who resembles the person we got it from because we're still desperate to get Dad to tell me I'm valuable rather than so somebody resembles that and they're they love me oh that's so you know I just feel wonderful after I'd feel that from somebody but then she yells at me like that I didn't oh I'm back so she can't be the one it's got to be somebody else out there that I gotta find so what I try to do is uh you turn in in couples Focus so that each partner becomes what I call the the primary caretaker or attachment figure for their own Parts which frees up the partner to be the secondary caretaker because most all of us have that reversed we want our partner to take care of our parts or we want some Affair to do it or some you know that it's got a come from an external person but if you because we don't want to take responsibility for our own [ __ ] come on who wants to do that right it's much more fun to get into a relationship with somebody and project onto that person a a fantasy or an idealized version of who you think they are who you would like them to be and then charge them with the responsibility of healing all of your wounds right and when two people are doing that simultaneously it's combustible right yeah so it becomes tricky I would imagine when you have couples come in two people you have you know it's a very complicated knot untie and to you know gain some level of clarity and then beyond that once you have that understanding those those buttons are so deeply ingrained right like uh to not react when it gets pushed in the way that you have historically your entire life I feel like in intellectual understanding of the dynamic will only get you part of the way there like I think you know mindfulness and meditation play a big role in just giving you that extra pause so you can kind of calculate your environment a little bit better and calibrate your your response um but that identification piece that you're talking about like oh that's the critic or that's the this and that you know that's what's operating here yeah I'm on a good day we get into it we both say okay time out we get away from each other we both go inside we find the parts that we're doing the talking we try to get them to tell us about the parts they're protecting we go in and let them know we get that that felt bad but let me handle this you guys don't have to handle it so from self I'm saying that mm-hmm and I feel the shift I feel that Rush of anger just kind of separate and I'll I'll say I'll you know we'll talk to you later let me go back and so I go back in a very different place and she does too and things that used to take days to get over take out you know right yeah sure yeah yeah um how do you work with somebody who has compartmentalized that that piece of themselves so so completely such that you know the request to bring it into the light or be in conversation with it is is equal is almost like a death threat right like the like they're holding on so tightly to this thing that makes them you know they think makes them who they are and to relinquish control or to have a different relationship with whatever it is makes it it literally feels like you're going to die right because that is part and parcel of how they've constructed their identity to keep themselves safe that's right and again you're using pronoun day but it's just a part so there is a part that's been running their life and thinks it's them and is very attached to being in charge and so the idea that there are other parts is very threatening to it the idea that it's not who rich is uh like you said it can be terrifying like they're going to die if they really even look at that so there are some clients like that that come in and I'm very gently just connecting with them I'm not bringing up parts I'm just helping them trust that it's a safe environment and that at some point I might say something like you know I noticed that uh there's a part of you that really has gotten you where you where you are now and it's been terribly valuable in many ways and I'll bet it's really tiring because I I bet it's just constantly striving and working and uh we we love that part so valuable and it's done such a good job but just check and see if it might want a little bit of a break and and might want to check around and see if it's if it's totally alone in there or if there might be other parts of you or even uh you who could be helping it so it's a kind of a sales pitch really yeah but to do it in a very gentle non-judgmental non-pathologizing way loving way we love this instead of you know that thing that you do is hurting everybody around you all the time like that doesn't work you know and that that's a a relic of the 12-step movement too where you're to confront people about how how much damage their activity is cost and that's that's a big mistake in general I mean sometimes it works that like shakes people out of there but a lot of times people just get more entrenched in their protectors yeah that's interesting I mean there is you know a core piece obviously is is the is the inventory right which nobody really tells you what you kind of can't write but you're meant to go on this inward journey to you know really you know tabulate your behavior over time um and I think there's a lot of value in that because it does SNAP you out of whatever identity mode you're in about who you think you are and and sheds light on the reality of how you actually behave and that allows you to then see how that impacts other people and then you know in lockstep with that you make your amends into the world that's right so explain to me what's missing in that piece is it the sense that it's like there's a there's a harshness to it or you know what would you you know there can be I think there's 12-step approaches that aren't harsh that really just do try to do that inventory from a mindful place and not the shame isn't so so involved in a um and even if you do it softly I mean a lot of times the addiction is a way to stay away from even looking at all the stuff you've done in your life so just pushing somebody to go back and look can be very very triggering for them and bring forth all kinds of Shame so um I don't have an argument with what you just described it's more uh when somebody's in denial the aggressive approach to that denying part rather than I can see there's a part that doesn't want to look at any of this let's get to know that part and see what it's afraid would happen and then I would reassure the part that there's a lot we can handle and I'd be right there to handle help it with that do you know what I'm saying yeah yeah I understand that and and it's all founded on this idea that there are no bad parts or I think the title of one of the other books um having a compassionate relationship with all of these parts but is there an argument to be had that that maybe some of these parts are bad like what about the the person who has the part in them that that makes them you know go shoot up a school or you know perpetrate a a violent crime on another individual like yeah is it your argument that we should have compassion for that piece and try to understand why it it drove the self to act out in that way or can we not label that as something pernicious that we need to you know override and and and overcome you can but it hasn't been working that well so I believed that okay maybe these critics are good and maybe these binging parts are good but what about those kinds of people that you just described and to test that I consulted to a treatment center for offenders sex offenders for a number of years and worked with a lot of those perpetrators and we would find the perpetrating part and they of course felt totally ashamed of it and so we had to work a lot to the point where they could get curious about it and then start asking these same kind of questions and it would show them scenes in their childhood when they were being perpetrated not necessarily in the same way and that this part decided I've got to protect this kid looked around the room and said who has power in this room it's the person who's hurting me I'm going to take in that energy to try and protect the kid from that parent and then gets stuck with this this per this desire to hurt people the desire to to hurt little kids even uh get stuck with that burden and then you know the person goes into life and tries to keep it at Bay and lock it up and it just gets more extreme right right that that tends not to work right yeah so the point of all that is once I got that that's when I could start saying okay maybe there are no bad parts and I would go to other you know I've been in prisons I've been working with murderers I've been is that does that work have you noticed whether that works in a in a case of of true sociopathy or somebody who is you know uh completely lacking in empathy altogether is it is it a case of understanding why they lack empathy you know getting to know those parts them to a place where their self can experience empathy again yes yes it's the case that's revolutionary in terms of how that that contradicts it's very revolutionary and um it's it's if you see them as a sociopath you're going to have one response if you say oh there's a part that protects them that doesn't let them feel anything or care anything about anybody and just tries to get whatever they want even if it's destructive to other people and it's a protector and let's get to know it and see where it's stuck in the past and help it which is what I've been doing with a lot of these kinds of people I know that this modality is is you know like we said you know kind of at odds with traditional methods uh so what is the like how is this being received in the the broader you know scientific community in in your field has that changed I mean there there is because it's so different and what you're proposing is you know at odds with so many so many of the the kind of principles it's very radical and uh you know I told you this is our 40th anniversary of the beginning of it and so for probably 30 years I labored in obscurity and I got attacked by those kinds of people and seen as dangerous and uh for whatever reason the last decade it's caught fire and I don't really know why I've tried to figure it out not as much like I was in Academia I was in the department of psychiatry and then tried to present there and got attacked and just decided okay I'm going to go Grassroots so since then I've been the last 30 years I've just been trying to bring it to therapists and uh and now it's everywhere now I don't know why it's being embraced yeah and is there a different narrative within that more traditional culture that's changing or is it there's still resistance no it's not no they're still very wedded to the DSM and seeing all these things as diseases or disorders and it's still very simplistic in other words diagnose prescribe without uh you know understanding like when you like what is the the emotional experience of of diagnosing a patient when they hear that diagnosis and and and what that does to someone's you know awareness of like who they are and what they're capable of and what they're not capable of well um you know if some diagnoses people attached to and they feel like okay I've got this condition that's why I'm doing the stuff and it's a relief in a sense and some of their 12-step does that you know you're an addict and all that uh but it doesn't really help you change your relationship with the parts that are making you do this it just kind of it helps you with your Shame about it but you still feel like a broken person you feel like there's something wrong with you and that uh it's not you know very pessimistic about changing it other than medication or um 20 years of talk therapy and and your perspective there's there's there isn't that immutability obviously in in the Diagnostics yeah these Diagnostics these diagnostic categories just represent clusters of protectors usually that you know they're pretty good descriptions of common clusters of protectors but that's all they are and and so instead uh we go to the protectors and we start to to help them trust they don't have to keep doing this how does the the ego work within all of this the ego as we sort of conventionally understand it um is there a locus of that in this model or you think differently around that like explain your yeah so what people traditionally call the ego for me is a cluster of little managers they're the parts that you'll most identified with some you know some think they are you like we were saying and they they run your life and they're you know the voices in your head that are trying to figure out when you're in a dilemma which way to go it's often these two different managers trying to both trying to protect but an opposite way so that's what both uh psychology and also spirituality see the ego as as often a past you know that gets in the way and are and so I'm trying to also bring this compassionate awareness of the ego because it's the parts of you that that jumped into those roles to just manage your life when you were young and they've been doing it ever since and they're tired too and they get a Bad Name all the time so instead of of uh maligning them again it's the same thing like go in understand it why is it behaving why is this part showing up in this way and what sort of phrase would have that's the one of the big questions for protectors what's it afraid would happen if it didn't do this job and in answering that you're going to hear either about the Exiles it protects or about some firefighters polarized with and it's afraid will take over if it doesn't keep you busy writing books or whatever right you know no I get it and then and then there's the uh there's The Saboteur right so talk a little bit about that I mean that's that's the the the the the part that is uh you know always undermining you uh at just the opportune moment yeah if you happen to have it that part we could ask it when it's afraid would happen if it didn't and generally uh it's afraid you would succeed and if you succeeded you'd be seen and if you're seen you'd be attacked or some version of that so it's keeping you small let's keep you small yeah to keep the risk the risk level like low the stakes the stakes being low yeah um you know one of the things that's that's cool about all of this is once somebody has had experience with sessions and sort of been you know LED down the path of you know having an experience with with uh yourself or or one of the other practitioners of ifs there's a whole sort of set of tools that then can be practiced by the individual itself like it becomes a very practical kind of habit-based tool that one can use on a daily basis yeah um I said earlier it's become a kind of Life practice so when I wake up in the morning I'll spend a little time in bed just checking in with the parts that I've been working with and seeing how they're doing today and do they need anything and have any of them reverted to their past roles or brought the burdens back or um and I'll just make sure they know that I haven't forgotten about them because for me these are real these are not imaginary this is a real inner family that we we all live with and just like your external family if you neglect them they're gonna get extreme so there's a ongoing it doesn't take long usually you know maybe 10 minutes but just uh staying connected reminding them okay today I'm going to be doing this interview with Rich and I can handle it you know you guys don't have to jump in you don't have to you can just let me stay because it always goes better if you let me stay and we might even rehearse a little bit and so and and so when I get here and having lunch I'm talking to them about it's okay it's gonna be okay just let me stay and then I stay with those c word qualities I'm you probably have sensed I'm pretty calm I'm pretty confident I'm pretty um clear and and compassionate and there's like eight c words that that describe what I'm calling self um creative I'm connected I forgot I think I just found compassionate uh Curious clear connected uh courageous yeah is that eight that was the one I missed yeah I think that's eight yeah so and every every self in its purest State uh those are those those eight C's kind of uh are are prominent qualities yeah there are other qualities like joy and perspective and but they don't begin with the letter c I like you know alliteration and these eight are the ones that are most relevant to the healing Endeavor so you know um I can check very quickly how much I'm in my body and self versus there's some part that's taken over and you get a real palpable sense of the difference and if I feel like you know if you said something that triggered me I would notice and then I would just say just just let me stay just relax a little bit and now my parts trust that it's better if they do that it's taking a lot of work a lot of those morning connections and a lot of unburdenings but now they basically trust me most the time yeah that's that's interesting I think there's something really beautiful about the idea that the unencumbered unadulterated you know uncompromised pristine self that lives within all of us um is characterized by all of these you know laudable traits right like within that there seems to be a certain spirituality right like if all human beings have this within them and that's somewhat of a a natural law from your perspective and and something that shares and unites all of us and our path really or our journey is to either you know is to ReDiscover that within ourselves and express that like I think that's a you know there is there is a you know a a sort of you know non-denominational uh you know spiritual Beauty and all of it thank you it's true and when I entered all this I was a scientists non-spiritual person I come from a theistic father and and uh but the big challenge for me was as I started to see self in people that had no business any having any of those qualities given their histories I couldn't explain it from traditional psychology which believes in attachment Theory and attachment Theory says for you to have any of those seaward qualities you needed to have a certain kind of parenting during a critical period in your childhood and if you didn't get that then you got to get it from a therapist you got to get it from a spouse or it's comes from a relationship it's not inherent in US and I was finding people that have been abused on a daily basis just by getting some parts to open space the same person would pop out in them that was popping out in all these other less abused clients so I couldn't reconcile that until people started saying well maybe this is like Buddha nature or maybe this is like Atman or maybe this is like Christ Consciousness or it seems like every spiritual tradition has a word for it whereas almost no other psychologies do so then I started to say okay I can ground it over there and it turns out you don't have to meditate 10 years to get to it it's right beneath the surface and of course once you you you you create a healthy Matrix of relationships with all of these parts and the self can emerge and express those eight C's not only are you becoming a more you know fulfilled self-actualized healthy um human being who can contribute positively to the world there's a whole Downstream uh you know series of implications to that because it ends up obviously you're affecting all the people that you're interacting with in a positive way as well yeah and as I'm getting older and uh trying to figure out what I want as my legacy I'm moving this to larger and larger systems because I think the world needs isn't just my system but this is one of many systems that can actually make a difference and so I'm trying to uh to bring more self-leadership to the world basically and um and you know having some success doing that and because I do like I said earlier self is contagious so for example we have we're working on now a training for executive coaches so that CEOs will be more self-led and that will just spread throughout the company and uh and I'm working with a lot of the top social activists in the country now so they're not doing their activism from righteous Parts but right martyrdom like basically an expression of their their pain body that's right yeah and it often is and as we heal that those painful parts then they can lead from self and they are much more effective how does one gauge their their progress like I've found that often it's others who are the more reliable effective mirrors of of one's personal growth because on a day-to-day basis it's hard to really know that within yourself how does one know when they're they're moving in the right direction or you know is there is there a situation in which you've arrived at at a place of of well-being or is this just layer after layer until you know yeah expire well I've been at it 40 years and I'm still finding parts that need to be healed but um to answer your question I don't get triggered like I used to by so many things so some of how you can judge it is are the same things triggering me and it's just not the case anymore so that's one measure yeah um there seems to be uh a sort of anthropomorphizing of all of these parts right like do you have people give them names do you have them conjure faces and personalities for them like I'm reminded of of I think it was Elizabeth Gilbert who was talking about like you hear a lot of this in the context of of creatives going to war with their like resistance or um writer's block and and you know kind of giving names to that and saying you know Elizabeth Gilbert's example is we're going on a road trip we're going to drive across America and like okay buddy you know like the the you know the part to use your phraseology that is telling her she's worthless and can't write and has nothing to say and you know blah blah blah um her way of explaining it was like you can come out you're gonna come like you're with me like we're in Partnership right like I'm not you know like pretending you don't exist like you're here yeah uh but you just can't sit in the passenger seat like you got to get in the back seat right and uh and if you start piping up like then I'm gonna you know put you in the trunk or or whatever like so there's a question trunk but yeah yeah so it's like we come up with all these creative ways of of saying something sort of similar to what you're talking about right that isn't repressing or denying or ignoring or compartmentalizing this aspect that we're very aware is looming in there but finding a way to communicate with it so it feels heard but not empowered to you know exert itself in a way that's going to be damaging yeah and and she's been using RFS for a number of years so that that's why she talked about it that way oh interesting oh yeah that's cool in fact I'm going to interview her for a thing I'm doing I think in a week or two uh-huh so I think so it is her yeah I think I'm remembering that story right from yeah yeah yeah except the trunk I don't think she would oh maybe yeah maybe not but but I I just do I do remember that idea of like I'm not saying you can't come right like you're coming yeah just shut up or like they like you but you can't drive we're just not gonna let you drive right right right right right right or maybe it was uh like you can come but you can't like choose the songs on the radio it could be something like that I can't remember um and then of course Stephen pressfield calls it resistance and then the flip side is the muse and that made me think about um the sort of the converse of that idea which is adopting an alter ego to go you know kind of do the thing right like almost in or you put on your armaments or your your your your your your battle ready by you know adopting a Persona that is kind of an extreme extrapolation of who you are in order to go put yourself in a challenging or difficult situation does that mesh up with like your model at all no that kind of violates the spirit of it interesting it's really to help those armored Parts trust there is this other person in there who can handle like three of those eight c words are courage confidence and clarity so that's all you need myself can be totally fierce if necessary it does I don't have to rely on an armored part and if I'm going into a dangerous situation I can ask my Exiles to just go into a kind of waiting room they don't have to be here even uh and let me handle this situation so we're really trying to help these protectors trust self and not feel like they've got a yeah interesting because yeah I'm wondering like so it was Kobe Bryant who had the Mamba mentality or David Goggins becomes Goggins and the iron Cowboy becomes the iron cat like they're they're they're sort of trying to you know Channel a larger than life version of themselves so what is you know what is what's wrong is the wrong word but maybe well that's different that's different that's kind of what I'm getting at though yeah so you know I played college football at my size and so there was a part of me that I just hated my father was full of rage and loved running full speed into guys twice my size and I would call on that part and it kept me alive it kept me from being damaged um so in those kind of situations where uh it's it's fine to call on those parts um right like an athlete who's trying to Channel A superhuman performance yeah unless in doing that you're perpetuating this sense that they don't know you and that they don't trust you and they feel like they they have to protect you all the time right you're the you're the You're The Wizard of Oz right he's behind that curtain yeah it's like feeble and and in in in in incontinent compared to the alter ego right at my age that's uh that's not funny um so it's we're helping them become like volunteer volunteer fire department rather than firefighters that are on duty comments right right right but you're able to call summon them yeah yeah yeah yeah I still have that part when I'm now I sometimes play basketball it can still I still like it when it takes over sure but it doesn't have to protect me all the time yeah um well I think it would be cool to are you we talked about you maybe you know taking me through an exercise or you would love to do that totally all right well let's let's try this out how do we do this do you have something you want to explore um we've talked about a bunch of different parts of you yeah I mean I think uh you know I've done so much work in in so many different modalities over the years and have grown tremendously but I still get tripped up by certain things that you know I feel I beat myself up then for not being having grown more I still uh you know I still um driven but well I'll just give you kind of a bunch of stuff and maybe you can extract from that what might be worthy of focusing on I mean I still I've gotten a lot better but I still you know externalize this uh you know this sense that that my value is calibrated to you know my accomplishments or that you know love is is conditional as opposed to something that I should just be able to receive um you know that that no matter what I do I'm never going to be good enough that uh you know you should be very afraid because it's all going to fall apart all these stuff these things have already I've already mentioned I think I have a a you know I walk around with a little bit of a self-conscious protective shell around me and you know on some level I'm still the scared kid at the bus stop that used to get to get up a little bit that's right um and I know that you know I've heard you do this exercise with other people and often it's it starts with um communicating to that five-year-old version of yourself and and I was reflecting on that a little bit and realizing like I don't have any memories like I don't I don't have like I don't remember being five like some of my earliest memories are are much later than that yeah and you may not have visual memory but you may have Sensei but we just don't know until we get in there but so far you mentioned four or five different protectors we could start with so they're used to think you mentioned the critic and then there's the striver that's trying to get achievements so you feel better about yourself and then there's that shell and there was one other I don't remember I don't know imposter syndrome perfectionism yeah control okay you know I can I can keep going by the way but like just pick one of those yeah it's like it's that thing of like I've got a lot I feel like I have a a pretty good level of self-awareness around all this stuff um with self-awareness by itself doesn't sure help them change of course right and and I did just do um some pretty intense work around family of origin stuff and and and so I I feel like I'm better armed around a lot of the childhood trauma issues and and I've been able to um uh give myself a little bit more leeway and compassion than I was able to earlier and also view my parents in a much more forgiving and compassionate way because I do have like sort of latent anger that flares up that I think is related to that in certain ways that still comes up from time to time okay all we need is a starting point so among all those protectors is there one you'd like to start with I think the the one that um is probably the most important is is the protector that won't let me receive or or give love or has that conditional relationship around around it okay that has to do with worthiness of course we don't have to figure it out right now we're just going to start by focusing on that feeling or however you experience that protective part and find it in your body or around your body yeah it's hard because there's cameras and there's lights and I'm sitting across from you and I'm caught up in my head around like this is gonna this is a public thing and you know it's like there's a lot of layers here that maybe might prevent me from totally being able to may not work at all so we'll there's no pressure and uh I assume we can edit some of this out sure sure places you don't want it to um it's not so much that it's it's more about whether I'll be able to uh against the like I have to perform now right I gotta be a good performer for you and for the audience uh it's more about like that self-consciousness of of being watched that is preventing me from well maybe we should start with that one why don't we start with that self-conscious part all right see if you can find it in your body around your body I don't know I also feel my skeptic coming up here too a little bit we should start with that yeah uh and I'll and I want to be a good I understood test case I want to tell you where it is even though I'm not sure where it is just anything I would say in general probably around you know my heart all right my sternum so focus on it there and tell me how you feel toward it are we still talking about the self-conscious part or what are we talking about um I think the the the worthiness of love part is probably more at the heart of so that's where you find him yeah and as you notice from there how do you feel toward him as you Sun soon I mean there's a sense of of there's competing feelings on the one hand there's there's sadness that there's this person that feels like they're not worthy unless they're doing things that you know people approve of right and how exhausting that must be totally um and then there's the other side of it which is yeah but this is what makes you you and look at all the amazing things that you've been able to do as a result of it this is your this is your best friend and and your superpower yeah and you should hold on tightly to that and it's okay because it's okay it's okay if you're not able to uh receive love because you because you're putting something good into the world and that can be your legacy and that's enough okay so we're going to ask the part that just said all that to just give us a little space for five minutes to actually get to know this one in your heart and we get that it feels really dependent on that to do what you're doing but let it know and if it lets us help this one you're not going to stop doing what you're doing you'll just do it more effectively I promise I've heard that before and I don't believe it that's fine not to believe it but just ask if it would give us a chance and it doesn't have to if it's if it's too determined that this would be too threatening to your system but if it's willing to let us go with compassion to this one you can lead the system more effectively than this part so I mean I can do I say that out loud don't have to say it inside okay but if if it's willing you'll notice a shift and you won't have that same need to keep it going say it's holding on pretty tight okay and we could shift to it you know the one who really thinks you have to have this other to get anywhere so in other words have me speak for that part yeah okay yeah I might even I could talk to it directly for a second if you want sure okay so you're the part of Rich that really thinks um he needs to feel all this bad feeling to be motivated to do his job and that that's enough he doesn't need to have love in his life otherwise because he's bringing this to the world is that right you're that part a little bit I I would yeah I mean I think just let us just let it speak don't speak yeah so you're the person you know rich is he's got issues let me tell you yeah right he uh he's he's weak he's a little too sensitive and uh if I didn't show up you know this guy might have not ever moved out of the house and so I boost him every day I get him out in the world I get him to hustle and like look what I've been able to manifest as a result of that um and uh you know just keeping him shy of of that you know that prize that he's reaching for uh gets him out of bed every day okay so I do believe you deserve a huge amount of credit for all you just described all right are you tired though yeah am I is it the part now or is it yourself as a part the part is indefatigable okay I think the self is tired just just let the part speak though is that true that you're you're not tired you you just could keep going forever or are there times where you get a little tired it's a drag but uh I got a lot of endurance and uh and I get uh I get a kick out of the suffering out of you get a kick out of Rich's suffering yeah and what's what's the kick about uh because through that suffering he uh he learns more about himself okay so you're afraid if he gave up the suffering he wouldn't be learning much the suffering is the engine oh well that's different it's not just learning but he wouldn't be motivated in the way he is without the suffering if he's not suffering then he's not working hard enough yeah okay all right and how old do you think rich is um don't think just let it come uh probably 15. yeah okay so it's I get that when he was 15 you really had to do this for him but would it shock you to learn that he's considerably older than that he might think he's older than that but I know that he's still 15. you know that he's still 15. and he's still as vulnerable as he was then or what's your sense yeah it's hard to parse the self from the part um just let the part spec the part uh the part probably you know is the the part is operating under the assumption that nothing's changed right that he's still in that kind of vulnerability is that right yeah okay so I understand why you're still taking this position that was so necessary back then but if you really trusted that he wasn't so vulnerable now as he was then would that make a difference in your attitude it would but you're going to have to prove to me that he's trustworthy yeah so tell me more about why you think he's not trustworthy yes that's a that's a hard one to answer because you don't want to disclose something or just no no not because I don't want to because I'm trying to identify like if so the part so that part um doesn't trust you doesn't trust me because at 15 I had a lot of vulnerabilities and weaknesses that were exploited that's right by others and and I can't see the person the self that is operating today that's right yeah yeah he still lives back there he doesn't know you he doesn't know who you are he still thinks you're 15 and as vulnerable as you were and that you couldn't protect him back then so we can keep going or we can shift but if you wanted to keep going I would ask how you feel toward that 15 year old boy I feel really I have deep sadness for that like compassion sadness yeah yeah could you let him know that and just see how he reacts to your compassion there's that um a gratitude I think just for being seen that's right because the feeling of being invisible totally so let them know you get back then he was feeling very invisible but that you see him right now I see him too yeah and that you care about him just see if there's more he wants you to know about what it was like back there for you know I think uh a deep loneliness and sensitivity and and feeling feelings of of being misunderstood and and not being heard or or recognized but instead sort of being uh shouldered with expectations that that didn't really meet that didn't really honor or recognize like the the person you know yeah yeah so as you're getting this how are you feeling toward him uh if there's a there's a there's a feeling of calm sort of a catharsis yeah yeah so it's really helping him to have you witness him this way um yeah and do you see him right now or you just sense them in there now I can see him and how close would you say you are to him in terms of feet away oh just you know right next to him and how is he reacting to your proximity I think he's uh uh unsure not not necessarily trusting this is new for him yeah so we're not going to push this we're just going to be with them in this caring way until he starts to trust a little more in whatever way feels right to you Reg to let him know that you he can trust you and just take your time and trust you he doesn't have to perform for you he you're just there with him because you care about him yeah I think that that he's comforted by that he's you know he's scared and uncertain so and feels alone in that and and and and um and very private in that yeah so ask if he would like you to show up this way for him more than you have there's a resistance to that yeah from not from him from some other part just ask um it's more of uh you don't understand from him yeah so ask him about that and where does that come from yeah you know it's it's it's a lot of uh it's all about like Legacy burdens really great yeah which you talk about yeah yeah so what's he saying about the Legacy burden I have to be this person okay um I'll make it work yeah you know it'll be fine just leave me alone so he carries all that mm-hmm yeah yeah and ask since he got that from other people it's not his does he like having to carry all that no but it doesn't feel safe for him to be who he wants to be in that context in that time period is that right yeah to ask him if he'd like you to take him out of there to a safe place yeah that's what he wants okay so are you ready to do that or is he ready to yeah yeah all right so let's take him could be the president it could be to your house it could be a fantasy place wherever he'd like to go specifically just ask him I don't know that there's a specific place other than away from where he is so just take him just bring him here for now all right and tell me when he's here okay how does he like being here I think he's confused okay what's he confused about well why are there other lights and It Was 1980 a second ago and now there's a lot of stuff that is unrecognizable yeah that makes sense he's confused a lot of this didn't exist in 1980 right okay but does he trust that he's not out and not in that time anymore yeah how's that for him relief yeah does he trust you care about him I think so because it was just demonstrated yeah that's right yeah okay just ask him though yeah so tell me never has to go back you're going to be looking after him and ask with that if he's ready to unload this Legacy burden that's uh made him feel so bad I think the there is a a welcoming of that but also at that age the the the Legacy burden or expectations weren't something that that I was fully conscious of at the time and when is operating in my unconscious but I wouldn't have been able to label it or understand it so I think there's a he's not quite understanding okay the proposition let's let's put it this way ask him to scan his body and see if there's anything he carries that doesn't belong to him yeah there's a lot where does he carry all that in his body around his body I think it's it's it's almost everything it's a sense of of feeling trapped in the wrong life okay yeah and now that he's here with you and you're going to be taking care of him would he like to unload that yes all right and ask him what he'd like to give it all up to light water fire wind Earth anything else I think the water okay so set that up take him to water and tell him to just let all that out of his body off of his body let the water take it there's no need to carry that anymore because he's not living back there anymore mm-hmm and just do that until it's all out of him okay how's he feeling now lighter yeah Freer liberated good hopeful good and tell them now if he wants to he can invite qualities into his body he'd like to have to replace all that stuff you can just see what comes into him yeah I think uh uh an empowering sense of agency and self efficacy and permission really is a big one that is okay for him to be who he is that's right so how's he doing now I'm better yeah yeah so now let's invite all these protectors that we met to come in and see they don't have to protect him anymore there might be other parts but that he's doing well particularly the one that led us to him and just see how they react I think it's a a situation of of like confusion like okay what are we gonna do now but also like all right like I guess this is this is cool he seems like he's doing all right well what are we going to do now is a really good question so they can all start thinking about new roles if they want what would they like to do if they didn't have to be these these guys a source of empowerment there you go yeah that's right so thank them for letting us do this is actually quite a big piece of work yeah yeah and uh just check and see how it's feeling in there if there's anything else we need to do before we come back out now I feel like the the reassigned roles need to be just providing him with not just support and encouragement but with the tools that he's going to need to be able to stand on his own two feet and and explore his own way yeah are you willing to do that for them so let them know okay does that feel complete for now yeah that was pretty good come on out and how are you feeling I feel good I feel good um no it was it was uh surprisingly meaningful um I think it was a little bit impacted by just you know the the construct that we're in right now right like I probably would have been more emotional if I was sitting in your office and no one was watching right so I had a self-consciousness around that I think yeah I could tell um and also it's just being a newer exercise of trying to really uh get a handle on like the parts and how they're operating and separating that voice from my my voice yeah yeah given that this was your first shot at it you're really good at it yeah and we went to an exile that many people takes months to get to yeah well we'll see I mean what is the uh what is that what's the tail look like on this in terms of you know how many sessions you have to do or how do you have to like what is the you know kind of protocol that maintain yeah maintenance simply means what I was saying earlier like tomorrow morning wake up see how this 50 year old's doing if he's still feeling good if not why not what happened did some other part throw them back um because it was threatened to not have the power over him uh and and so just maintaining it on your own now it helps to map it out in some form but take it as you know as real right this is a real inner system that needs maintenance thank you thank you yeah um before we before we close it all down though um I think it would be cool if there was some kind of like is it okay to give the audience some type of practice I mean you talked about what the thing that you do in the morning but is there some kind of takeaway uh that they could start to wrap their heads around and and do themselves well the closest I can think of to that is I did a series of these kind of things exercises meditations for sounds true um and I forget what it's called but they should be able to find it all right we'll we'll find it and link it up in the show notes yeah and there are in the book no bad parts I think in that book too there are also exercises yeah yeah all right good um any place other than those two places and and picking up your books particularly the latest one that you want to direct people towards uh there's another book that just came out last month called introduction to internal family systems oddly enough and uh it feels like that should have been the first book yeah look these are actually second editions of them uh and so all that's coming out through sounds true and uh yeah otherwise if people go to the website which you can post there's a bunch of other stuff cool well I I really appreciate the work that you do um I know that it's been transformational for for many people including you know people that I'm close to and uh and uh I was moved by what you just took me through so I appreciate that as well I was honored to that you trusted me enough to do it honestly and really happy we could do that yeah all right well thank you very much you're very welcome cheers is out

Channel: Rich Roll

Views: 178,206

Keywords: rich roll, rich roll podcast, self-improvement podcasts, education podcasts, health podcasts, wellness podcasts, fitness podcasts, spirituality podcasts, mindfulness podcasts, mindset podcast, vegan podcasts, plant-based nutrition

Id: f80xs3MN9mY

Length: 112min 40sec (6760 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 12 2023