How to Resolve Painful Inner Conflict

Image by Jonathan Meyer

Have you ever felt like there is a battle raging inside? Feeling a powerful urge to do something, while an equal but opposite force urges you not to? This battle is often fiercest when we are trying to give something up, like comfort-eating food we know is not good for us, or trying to quit smoking. One force inside says, ‘Eat the cake!’ or ‘Just have one cigarette, you know you want to. You can always quit tomorrow.’

But the opposing force responds, ‘Don’t be an idiot! You know how much you want to lose weight before your wedding,’ or ‘Are you kidding me? You watched your grandpa die of lung cancer. How could you even think about smoking again?’

And this internal battle plays out, over and over. Sometimes one side wins, sometimes the other. And it’s so frustrating, isn’t it? Whatever you do, it can feel like you’re at the mercy of forces more powerful than yourself. Eat the cake, don’t eat the cake. Just have one cigarette, don’t have a cigarette. And on it goes, until you’re exhausted from all the fighting.

When parts get polarised

Internal Family Systems (IFS) therapy has a name for this battle – it’s called a ‘polarisation’. This means that two parts (or sometimes teams of parts) get polarised inside, trying to protect you with completely opposing strategies. Let’s look at this through the lens of someone trying to drink moderately, after years of problematic drinking.

Imagine you have, finally, taken steps to reduce your drinking. Your partner and family have been worried about you for years, but you resisted their entreaties to cut back, insisting you didn’t have a problem and drinking helped you blow off steam from your highly stressful job. Your doctor has also started expressing concern, after tests showed early signs of liver damage. After years of denial, you must face the truth: your drinking has become a real problem and if you don’t cut back, your relationships and health will suffer.

You go out for dinner with a friend on one of your newly designated sober days. Unfortunately, he is one of your old drinking buddies and thinks everyone’s making a big fuss about nothing. He orders a bottle of your favourite wine and, before you can stop him, pours you a large glass. ‘Cheers!’ he says with a mischievous glint in his eye, raising his glass for a toast. And the internal battle that has been raging for months starts up again.

Inside you hear two voices, one saying ‘Go on, what’s the harm? You know you’ll love it. And think about how stressed you’ve been all day. Your boss was a nightmare and you felt like you were having a panic attack in that big meeting. One glass will really take the edge off.’ With this siren song comes a powerful, visceral urge to pick up the glass and take a big gulp.

But another voice stops you. ‘What the hell are you thinking?’ it says in a worried, urgent tone. ‘You know what the doctor said – keep drinking and you’ll end up with cirrhosis. Your wife will leave you and you’ll lose everything. And you’ll feel so ashamed after you drink it, won’t you? Like you’ve failed, yet again.’

See the polarisation? One protective part, which is called a Firefighter in IFS, wants you to drink the wine to numb out all the stress and anxiety of your day. The other protector, called a Manager, has the exact opposite strategy for avoiding painful feelings like embarrassment and shame. The irony is that both parts have the same goal – avoiding painful feelings – but try to achieve that goal using diametrically opposing strategies.

Who are they protecting?

Imagine an upside-down triangle, with these warring parts at the top two corners, pulling in opposite directions. And at the base of that triangle is another part – the one they are trying to protect. This is almost always a young, hurt little kid who is feeling all the painful feelings above: stress, anxiety and overwhelm about your job and potentially embarrassment and shame about drinking when you swore not to.

So this is the part who needs help. Sadly though, as long as we’re laser-focused on the protectors, we lose sight of the only strategy that will actually work, and end this war – identifying, connecting with and healing the hurt young part. There are many routes to this inner-child healing, but my favourite is following a number of ‘healing steps’ in IFS. After we heal this young part, we go back to the protectors and see if they are willing to give up their extreme roles – usually they are, which is great.

Next time you’re struggling this way, especially in an ‘addictive process’ involving the compulsive use of some substance or activity, think about the upside-down triangle. Remember there are at least three parts involved in the process, even if you can only see one. And remember that, at the root of your problems is a small, scared, upset or lonely child, who just needs comfort, love and a big hug.

If you would like to start working on any polarisations in your inner system, try my Fire Drill meditation. This is a highly effective way to approach one of these polarised parts with curiosity and compassion, rather than frustration and hostility. You can listen now, for free, by clicking on the button below.

I hope it helps – and sending you warm thoughts if you are struggling right now, for any reason.

Love,

Dan ❤️

Why Every Part of You Deserves Love and Understanding

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

There Is No Such Thing as a Difficult Person

Image by Tumisu

Think of the person in your life that you find the most rude, annoying, insensitive or otherwise difficult. Can you see them in your mind’s eye? How do you feel as you picture them? I’m guessing some combination of irritated, frustrated, upset, hostile, vulnerable, anxious or exasperated.

Now I’m going to tell you a secret. This man or woman whom you think is so difficult, isn’t actually a difficult person. Why? Because none of us are entirely difficult, just as no-one is entirely lovable, kind, generous or compassionate.

That’s because we are all complex, multifaceted individuals, made up of an internal ‘family’ of parts. Some of these parts can indeed be difficult, but that’s not the sum total of who you are, or who that ‘difficult’ person is.

How parts work

There are many different ‘parts-based’ models of therapy, but my favourite is Internal Family Systems, developed by Dr Richard Schwartz (Dick to his friends). In this model, we are all made up of a complex, interrelated system of parts. This includes young parts who hold painful thoughts, memories, feelings and body sensations from your past (so a five-year-old part holds difficult stuff from when you were five, and so on).

You also have various protector parts, whose job it is to protect those young parts and make sure they never get hurt again. These protectors also try to keep the young ones hidden away inside, because they can hold such an intense emotional charge, which the protectors fear will overwhelm you if they come bursting out.

In IFS, it’s also thought that you have a Self, which is not a part but a rich array of inner resources like calm, compassion, clarity, confidence and more (some of the 8 Cs – Dick likes alliteration!).

So think about that ‘difficult’ person again. Got them? Right, now I want you to zoom in on the most troublesome behaviour they exhibit, whether that’s being rude, critical, dismissive, or whatever. Now label that as a part – so the Critical Part, or Angry Protector, and so on.

And now (here’s the bit that will help you manage this person better) try to understand that this protector, however rude, obnoxious or hurtful, developed at a time when that person was young, vulnerable and being hurt in some way. This protector’s job is to make sure that never happens again. Some protectors are proactive, like an Angry Protector, busily doing a job to keep them safe (being snippy or harsh, lashing out to keep potential threats at bay). Others are reactive, like a Soother part that makes them drink to numb out painful feelings as quickly as possible.

Look behind the curtain

And so, I guarantee that if you were look behind the ‘curtain’ (ie behind that protector part on the surface) you would find a young one who was hurt, scared, lonely, unloved, or some other painful thing. It’s like a dog who has been mistreated. They become very barky and aggressive, but they’re actually scared – being aggressive is the best way they know to protect themselves and make sure you can’t hurt them like they were hurt before.

This idea helps me virtually every day, as I deal with the various people in my life I find hard to manage. When they are doing whatever I find annoying, I try to see them as a scared little boy or girl. And suddenly they don’t seem so powerful. I can manage and set limits with the spiky protector part without demonising the person, thinking they are ‘horrible’ or ‘nasty’. They are just hurt and doing what they have always done to keep people at bay.

I hope you find that helpful – and if you’re interested in IFS, do come along to one of my webinars and workshops, as I and my co-presenters blend concepts and practices from IFS with other highly effective models in our teaching. We have two more planned for 2022 and one a month throughout 2023 – visit healyourtrauma.com to find out more.

Sending you love and warm wishes,

Dan

Healing Your Inner Child

Image by Michael Parzuchowski

The idea that we have an inner child, who carries all the hurt, trauma and painful memories from our past, is not a new one one in psychotherapy. But all of the newest, trauma-informed models have a particular way of thinking about this young, vulnerable part of us. In schema therapy, this young part is called the Vulnerable Child – and is the main focus of therapy, because the idea is if we can heal this part then he or she (and so, of course, you) feels calmer, happier, stronger and more at peace.

In internal family systems (IFS) therapy, there is also a strong emphasis on working with this part of you. The main difference is that, in IFS, there isn’t just one inner child, but many. So you might have a three-year-old part, a five-year-old, a seven-year-old, and so on. And this makes sense to me, because these parts of you hold all the painful memories, feelings, thoughts, body sensations and experiences of you at the age of three, five or seven.

If we just had one inner child, then they would have to hold memories of being, say, three, 12 and 17 – ages at which we are completely different in terms of brain development, personality, ways of thinking and feeling. It just doesn’t really make sense. Far more persuasive to me, based on all the theory and my own experience of working with hundreds of people over the years, is that we have many inner children, not all of whom need help, but some definitely do.

What is a part?

This leads to an important question – what exactly do we mean by a ‘part’? In some ways, this depends on the therapy model you believe best represents our inner world. Various models have different ways of answering this question (and all think theirs is the right answer!). But let’s go with the IFS model for now, as it’s one of my favourites – and I like their answer best. Dick Schwartz, founder of IFS, says that a part is a neural network in the brain, holding all of the thoughts, memories, etc that we did at the part’s age.

Dick argues that this is how the brain creates what we perceive of as our self (or many selves). If you experienced trauma in your childhood, this is also how your brain helps you deal with that trauma. It creates one or more parts to hold those traumatic memories (called ‘exiles’). And then various parts whose job it is to keep those memories buried deep in your unconscious, so you don’t have to think about them all the time (called ‘protectors’) and can function in your day-to-day life.

Healing young parts

There are many ways to heal these young, traumatised parts of you. One way is through the relationship between you and your therapist – this is a crucial attachment relationship and will help those little kids inside you feel safe, understood and cared for. You may never have experienced this as a child, so it can be deeply healing to have those experiences in the context of a therapeutic relationship.

In IFS (and schema therapy), using imagery is also integral for the healing process. Many IFS sessions are spent ‘going inside’ – closing your eyes and imagining speaking to your parts, often through imagery, where you visualise them and engage in all sorts of powerful, healing techniques and interactions with them.

Developing self-kindness and self-compassion is also fundamental in trauma recovery. This can be tough, especially for trauma survivors, but is always possible, with the right support and problem-solving. You may find my guided meditations on Insight Timer helpful for this, or try Kristin Neff’s practices on the same app, which are fantastic. And the self we are being kind and compassionate to is usually a young one, so this is calming, soothing and restorative for them, too.

I will be writing a lot more about healing your inner child in these blog posts, as well as teaching about them in my Heal Your Trauma webinars, so I hope all of that proves helpful for you.

Warm wishes,

Dan