This week was riddled with awareness regarding parts of me feeling uneasy with this path I am on, some deep realizations around this discomfort, and access to what feels like one of my oldest (or shall I say youngest) parts that I have come to know as the one who flails.
In order to provide context and a framework to follow as I talk about these parts of me, I will begin this post with a description of Internal Family Systems, as this is the model of practice that is informing much of the work I am doing.
Internal Family Systems (IFS)
IFS was developed by family systems psychologist Dr. Richard Schwartz in the early 1980’s as a response to hearing clients refer to “parts” of themselves in complex relationships that mirrored external family dynamics (Simon & Schwartz, 2021). This led Schwartz to categorize three behavioral types of parts as managers, firefighters and exiles (Schwartz & Sweezy, 2020). Exiles are the young and vulnerable parts that have been partitioned off from the rest of the internal system as they carry the sensitive and heavy emotional burdens from trauma and attachment wounds. Both managers and firefighters serve as protective parts that are trying to maintain balance, safety, and order within the system, which includes keeping exiles separate, isolated and out of conscious awareness (Schwartz & Sweezy, 2020). Managers use logic, over-thinking/over-analyzing and control as they try to hold everything together as their protective strategies, while firefighters use more drastic, harmful, and impulsive measures to keep the emotional pain of the exile out of conscious awareness (Schwartz & Sweezy, 2020).
This model of practice teaches how to inhabit the internal space of the Higher Self in order to turn towards these various parts inside with compassion, patience and understanding to help them update their roles, release what they have been holding onto, and regain a secure attachment environment within one’s system (Simon & Schwartz, 2021). The Higher Self is affiliated with one’s innate spiritual essence (Janes et al., 2022) and serves as the internal attachment figure for parts to come back into a healthy relationship with (Schwartz & Sweezy, 2020).
…Back to my parts
This week started with recognizing a part of me that feels rushed to get things done, and worries that there is not enough time, and as I sat with that I could also feel a stance or perspective that I am not enough or will not be enough. This hum of anxiety leads to impulses to drink more coffee, to plow through a to-do list, an occasional pull to dissociate and turn off, and a looming desire to both clear parts of my schedule as well as fantasize about days in the future when I have fewer responsibilities and how good that will feel - all impulses from managers and firefighters trying to avoid the discomfort of the exile energy. These are all very familiar reactions and thoughts and impulses, and I sat with them with curiosity.
One important insight that has come from this patient inquiry and willingness to feel without condition is that I am more aware of a part of me that feels as though she is in a constant state of flailing. I have sensed this part for as long as I can remember, but have not had the tools, words, patience or resiliency to turn towards her in a consistent and meaningful way, because it feels very destabilizing. She generally stays deep beneath other parts, protected well, yet when I slow down and turn inwards I can feel her there. She is the one who took over my system for several days when I had an existential crisis in my early 20s as my protector parts were in shock and lost their ability to keep this flailer in exile. I mention her now because I have a strong sense that she is connected to a trauma of separation, perhaps many generations of intense separations, and my hunch is that she will be who I need to reconnect with and help release what she’s holding onto as I move deeper into how coloniality is living in my tissues.
While I am not ready or resourced just yet to support this flailing part of me in the way she needs, this has led me to some important reminders around self care to ensure that I am on a sustainable path. This includes weaving the threads of joy, love, patience, presence and hope into each moment. To me this is one of the important ways that I lead with my heart and practice a heart-centered way of being. And this is at the core of why and what I am doing with this practicum project. The heaviness of this work is what causes so many to burn out or lose their way in what began as an intentional devotion to liberation of self and others. It is not easy to sit in discomfort and turn towards parts within that carry wounds and stories of trauma and the protective patterns that were developed to steer clear of those wounds and trauma. Yet I also recognized more clearly this week that what I am turning towards are feelings that have been with me for longer than I can remember, and that either attach to things happening in my life to make sense of their feelings, or linger in the space within me without clear reason and cause other dilemmas as I react to protect or shut down due to the intensity and energy requirements to manage it all. While the spotlight is on more consistently right now, it is not creating more issues internally, I am just more aware of how these parts impact everything I do all day long. What a gift of an opportunity this is.
With that, I was reminded through some heartfelt conversation and mindful reflection that I need to ensure I am engaging in heart-felt activities throughout the week to keep me connected to the goal of living more heart-centered. As I will reiterate throughout this project, when we decentralize something we need to be mindful and intentional of what we are re-centering. And in this work I am suggesting we are re-centering our heart over and over again, which leads to connection, deep wisdom, and a flow of energy that is intelligent beyond measure.
According to Godden (2017), leading with love is a “radical epistemology” that challenges the systemic competitive nature of patriarchal systems that we unconsciously carry and see acted out in our environments (p. 414). As allies, to lead with love is a reminder to slow down and see the multitude of parts that are operating within every person’s system, and seek to understand their fears and pains that are the fire beneath words and actions that are harmful (Schwartz & Sweezy, 2020).
When I am heart-centered I lean into connection, to play, and to wonder. I look for joy, I relax into laughter, and I reflect with curiosity and a deep desire to reduce harm in this world. I am attuned to the wisdom and nourishment of rhythm through movement, bouts of effort and surrender, breath, eating, and the vitality of being aligned with circadian and ultradian cycles. At the core of heart-centeredness is the tenet of relationality. While there is no pan-Indigenous way of knowing, a common thread is the view that everything is relational, and, therefore, malleable in its co-construction (Wilson, 2019). Relationality speaks to our interconnectedness and that by turning towards something (inside or externally), welcoming what’s here from the heart leadership of the Higher Self, we can be guided by the inquisitive prompt “what kind of relationship do I want to have here?” A heart-centered relationality is one that is expressed with love, compassion, and a deep desire for wellness for all.
I recognize that remaining in a compassionate and heart-centered relationality with some folks who are expressing and behaving in harmful or dismissive ways is not only difficult, it can also be quite controversial, and at times dangerous. I am not here to suggest that we stand back and allow harmful actions to continue, and in fact, at times a warm welcome will also include clear and fierce boundaries in regards to what is okay and what a healthy relationship looks like. I am suggesting that there is a way to enhance our ability to see beneath the harmful actions and access compassion as we recognize the pain, suffering and lack of support and resources that are perpetuating individual and collective issues. As Brene Brown says, “people are hard to hate up close. Move in” (2019).
My supposition is that this path of exuding compassion towards others with a heart-felt understanding and skill-set for disarming defense mechanisms in order to lean into connection will occur more naturally when we first focus on doing this work internally.
If that is where we are headed, how do we get there?
A trauma informed postcolonial approach to deconstructing the colonial self from the inside out
Next week I will break down this title to offer the context and relational understanding needed to grasp what this mouth full of a title means to me.
References:
Brown, B. (2019). Braving the wilderness: The quest for true belonging and the courage to stand alone. Random House.
Godden, N. (2017). The love ethic: A radical theory for social work practice. Australian Social Work, 70(4), 405–416.
Janes, E. E., Trevino, Z. R., Koehl, H., & Hung, Y.-H. (2022). Internal family systems and spirituality: Implications for supervision. Contemporary Family Therapy, 45(2), 218–227. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10591-021-09625-2
Schwartz, R. C., & Sweezy, M. (2020). Internal family systems therapy (2nd ed.). The Guilford Press.
Simon, T., & Schwartz, R. (2021, August 19). No bad parts. youtube. Retrieved October 15, 2023.
Wilson, S. (2019). Research is ceremony: Indigenous research methods. Langara College.