How to Let Go of the Burdens You Carry from Childhood
Image by Ali Kazal/Unsplash
Imagine that, on your back, is a heavy bag. And in that bag are all the painful thoughts, beliefs, feelings, memories and experiences from your childhood. We all have a bag like this – and hauling it around every day takes its toll. That toll might be low self-esteem, if your bag is full of negative beliefs like ‘I’m not good enough’ or ‘I don’t deserve to be loved’. It may be addiction, if your bag is stuffed with so much pain that you have to find a way to soothe it, with whatever substance or activity that serves to temporarily numb you out or distract you from your pain. It could be depression, if that bag is heavy with lacerating, self-critical thoughts.
Viewed through an internal family systems (IFS) lens, these painful cognitive, emotional and somatic experiences are burdens you have to drag around, through no fault of your own. In IFS, these burdens are carried by your inner system of parts. Young, hurt parts carry all the pain – memories of being bullied, or told you will never amount to anything. The backpacks these poor little girls and boys must carry are laden with hurt. But the parts who try to protect them also carry burdens – the burden of the jobs they do, which can be miserable. When we speak to, say, your Inner Critic or Worrier, and ask them what it’s like to be them, they almost always say it’s exhausting, that their job is relentless and they can never rest, in case something bad happens to you on their watch.
How your parts absorbed their burdens
Sometimes, it’s obvious how these burdens came to be. If one of your caregivers was too demanding, expecting perfection from you in every way, their exacting standards would have been impossible to reach. You were bound to fail, in their eyes, because no child can do everything perfectly all the time. So you would have felt a constant, pervasive sense of pressure, trying your best to please them but failing, over and over, to get 100% on that test, be the skinniest girl in ballet class, or the most athletic boy in school. So your poor little parts developed, holding the burden of feeling like a failure, of never being good enough, of stress, anxiety and shame.
At the same time, little clusters of protectors would have formed, desperately trying to help you keep up with mum or dad’s impossible demands. That cluster might have included a Critic, haranguing you to do better, never make mistakes and making you feel deeply ashamed when you inevitably did. There would probably be a Perfectionist as part of the mix, urging you to be perfect, all the time. And a Worrier, filling your head with ‘What if…’ thoughts like, ‘What if I fail this test? Mum will be so angry with me,’ or ‘What if I don’t score a goal in the match? Dad will look disgusted and tell me I’m worthless again.’
Let’s say this happens at age 8, when your little mind, brain, body and nervous system are still developing. These kinds of experiences would be traumatic for you – what we call ‘small t’ trauma – and so, like all traumas, would stay with your for life, unless you manage to heal them. This idea of burdens is not unique to IFS – in cognitive therapy they would be called core beliefs. Schema therapists view them as early maladaptive schemas. Sigmund Freud called them neuroses. And there are many routes to healing, including yoga, Buddhist practice and meditation, body work, 12-step programmes and sobriety, finding a loving, supportive partner… You need to find your own path, because what works for me might not work for you.
But I can testify to the healing power of IFS, for myself and my clients. That’s why I increasingly focus on this model in my therapy practice, writing and teaching, because it’s so warm, compassionate and transformational. IFS helps us hold our burdened parts with love and affection, however tricky they might be for us – and offers a step-by-step guide to releasing these burdens for good.
If this resonates with you, try my eight-day Insight Timer Course – Healing from Childhood Trauma with IFS & Self-Compassion. I’m honoured that 2,300 students have taken the course so far and the feedback I get is that it was inspiring and helpful for many of them, which is wonderful. I hope it helps you too – and that you get to lay some of those burdens down very soon.
Love,
Dan ❤️