Image by Tashi Nyima
Let me ask you a question: How do you feel about yourself, in general? I hope you mostly like and approve of yourself. But the opposite may be true – you may really dislike yourself and find it hard to treat yourself with anything approaching kindness. Sadly, this is especially likely to be true if you have a trauma history, because that often scrambles our sense of ourselves.
But even if you’re lucky enough to like yourself, most of the time, I bet there are parts of you that you’re not so keen on. Your inner Critic, for example. As I often say to my clients, nobody loves their Critic! That’s because this part of us often treats us harshly, or is highly demanding, pushing us way too hard with a long lists of shoulds (‘You should be doing better than this, what’s wrong with you?’ or ‘You should be thinner/smarter/richer/more popular/harder-working…’).
We may also feel negatively towards parts that make us do stuff we find shameful, embarrassing or destructive in our lives. The part that makes us drink too much. The parts that tell us to gamble, smoke weed, work obsessively, pick the same kind of unsuitable person over and over. Nobody loves these guys.
No bad parts
But as I have written before in these posts, we need to understand that there are no bad parts (such an important idea that Dr Richard Schwartz, founder of Internal Family Systems therapy, used it as the title of one of his books). Even what are called ‘extreme’ parts in IFS, like the ones listed above, genuinely mean well. It can be hard to see that sometimes, but every part of you is either holding some kind of pain or trying to protect you from it. And the weed-smoking one, or the gambling one, are just trying to help you numb, soothe or avoid painful emotions.
It’s why people get home from an uber-stressful day and say, ‘God I need a glass of wine!’ Or why people rush out from high-pressure meetings to smoke a hasty cigarette. In both cases that’s a soother-type part, helping the person deal with painful/stressful feelings. Now this doesn’t mean that we should drink like fishes or smoke 40 a day! Of course not. We may need to help these parts change, or set limits on them, but it’s imperative that we do that collaboratively, with compassion, or it just doesn’t work.
That’s why people get sober and relapse, over and over. Or why many smokers quit again and again and again, but always end up back on the baccy. If you want to make deep, long-lasting changes in your life, you have to work with these parts, not against them. You need to understand why they are making you drink/smoke/work/gamble. There is always a reason – and that reason is usually helping you with some kind of pain.
Easier said than done
I’m well aware that it’s much easier for me to write some encouraging words in a blog post than for you to actually change. To change the way you behave, day in and day out. Or the way you interact with these parts of yourself you may dislike, or even despise. It is not easy – take it from someone who spends their whole working life trying to help people change.
But it is doable. And this is one reason I recorded a new guided meditation recently – Sending Loving-Kindness to Every Part of You: IFS Meditation. I blended the classic Buddhist metta (loving-kindness) practice with the IFS approach, to help you develop greater feelings of self-acceptance, self-kindness and self-compassion for every part of you, even the tricky parts.
I’m pleased with this one, so I very much hope it helps.
Sending you love and warm thoughts ❤️
Dan