Welcome back to Book Club. So glad you're here.

One of the first things that I want to dive into is this concept of emotional completion in the NARM model. So what we know from what we've read so far is that as children, when we experience these environmental failures, we have to shut down our true self and shut down our true emotional experiences- lock them up and take them on offline. What that means is oftentimes as adults, we may struggle to connect with our authentic emotions. We may not even be aware of what our authentic emotions were because we weren't able to be with them as children, or they weren't reflected to us as children. We aren't born knowing what emotions are. We have to be safe to feel them and have people in our lives who can reflect them to us and model to us how to handle those different complex emotions like anger and sadness and jealousy and fear and all of those things.

So as an adult, that disconnection continues. And so we might be aware of distressing symptoms like we can't connect fully, we can't authentically be ourselves. We might feel anxious a lot of the time, or we might feel shame, but we might not be aware of what emotions are actually underlying these protective strategies that keep us from connecting to the emotions. So we consciously or subconsciously are spending a lot of energy avoiding those emotions, keeping them locked down. And oftentimes we use shame as a psycho biological tool to lock those emotions up in that lock box. And what that means is we might be protected from them, but our true authentic self who can experience the breadth of emotions is locked up in there as well. And so one of those things we can start to become aware of is our primary emotions versus our default emotions.

So maybe your default emotion is sadness. That's always the first emotion you go to. And it feels like a safe emotion to feel. It may be that underneath that sadness, you actually hold a lot of anger that you weren't supported to feel in your early life or even in your life now. And so you keep that sort of stuff down underneath and it keeps you disconnected, but you stay with sadness because it feels safe or vice versa. Maybe you go to anger quickly, but you actually have some deep sadness and grief under there. And then both of those cases, there might be terror. That feeling, your true primary emotion, will risk the connections in your life; that you might lose the connections. And those are the experiences we have in childhood that are different as adults. As adults, we can learn how to get underneath and find some of these primary emotions and figure out what those emotions are trying to convey and what those child consciousness parts of us might want us to feel. And as we do that, little by little, we start to feel our adult self capacity in the present where we can feel emotions even when they're hard. We can feel emotions and be safe. Emotions are valid and they are worthy of our attention. And our life is not at stake for feeling our emotions.

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Now, of course, I add the caveat that I'm saying in most cases. If you're actively existing in a traumatic environment, then the same will not be true that we're talking about when you can build a false sense of safety and have a false sense of safety around you, meaning your needs are met and you are safe. If that's not the case, it's still possible to be curious about this work, but your nervous system and brain are going to be more protected as they should be. So different from old models in the 80s and 90s that were really big and catharsis just having people feel all their feelings and use foam backs to beat up the pillows. NARM is all about allowing you to feel your capacity as an adult, to feel some emotion and allow it to complete, to be contained, to feel your own vitality in life, energy, in feeling and emotion without having to flood yourself and also without having to shut it all down. When you do this, that's when you can start to feel joy, creativity, aliveness, presence, connection and pleasure.

But we also have to titrate those experiences, meaning take them one drop at a time. And that can be really hard to understand. For those of us where relaxing or feeling pleasure or joy or creativity doesn't feel good, it actually feels dangerous. That's because of those adaptive protective survival strategies that don't want us to have expansive energy, because that was such a risk to us in our childhood, because it would have led to us losing connection. It felt like it would have led to us losing connection with those around us. If you're really curious about what this might look like in real life, I highly recommend checking out Inside Out or the new Inside Out 2, to understand a little bit what it might look like to touch into some of our emotions from that self, from that adult place, little bits at a time and in the same vein as emotional completion, we have this concept that in NARM is called dis identification. Internal family systems, which is another model that works similarly, calls it unblending.

And if you join after we finish this book and we start reading “No Bad Parts,” we'll learn more about that. But what this idea is that so many of us, because we grew up in these environments with ruptures and failures or systemically or within our families, we have these adaptive protective survival strategies that feel like they are us. We don't know- we can't tell- where the strategies end, and we begin because we feel like we genuinely just don't have needs or where people pleaser. We're an intellectualizer or we're a perfectionist just feels like who we are. I've often had people say to me, it's just my personality. And what we know within this model is that those strategies are almost like wearing a suit of armor. So you are you you are underneath it there, but you're wearing this really, really, really heavy suit of armor, maybe several suits of armor. So you're walking around every day with your true self way buried underneath of there with this really heavy armor of these protective strategies on top.

So this concept of dis identification, or unblending is where we start to find ourselves, our true selves, our adult consciousness- who we are- underneath all of those protective adaptive strategies. So dis identification lets us, little bits at a time, start to uncouple ourselves from our strategies, to start to find our authentic selves underneath of there, where we can really feel what it's like to be authentically ourselves and present in whatever way makes sense for us. Does that mean we're authentic 100% of the time? No. Does that mean we're perfectly present and authentic in every situation? No, it does not have to mean that at all. But what it means is that you have agency and flexibility (meaning choice), to do those things. If you want to do those things, and when you want to do those things, this identifying or unblending can be absolutely terrifying because those survival strategies have kept us safe for so long. It's as if those parts of us, they don't want us to dis identify; they don't want us to be our true, authentic selves. Because that is so scary and so risky that it feels like a threat to our lives. It really gets our survival system going as if a bear is about to eat us, because our connection with our family and our culture and people around us are built upon these survival strategies.

So if we suddenly start having needs or feeling emotions, what's going to happen to the relationships around us? To the child consciousness, that just feels so utterly terrifying. Like we will be voted off the island and we won't belong. Of course, the tricky part of this is if we only belong now because of our strategies, then we don't get to have an authentic sense of belonging because it's not truly us. But over time, little by little, we can start to build your capacity for being in that adult consciousness self, where you can feel more neutrality and more curiosity and more connection. We know that all of life is about the expansion and contraction, the in-breath and the out-breath. The waves come in and the waves go out. And oftentimes clients will say to me, well, I don't I don't want to feel the disconnection. And I *so* understand and resonate with that. But sort of the same thing as saying, I only want to breathe in. I don't want to breathe out. When we're in our adult consciousness ourselves, we know that we can experience the ups and downs and the connection and disconnection of life and still be connected to ourselves, and that provides that deep level of safety and aliveness and connection that so many of us didn't get to have in our earlier lives.

So some of the reflection exercises in this chapter ask you to reflect on the time you felt connected to your heart, or alive or more authentic, and to notice what happens inside of you in your presence and your sense of aliveness as you do this. And what I want to say about these reflective exercises is that they are wonderful tools, but if they don't feel good to you or comfortable to you where you are right now, that's more than okay. You might have done already ten years of work, or you might just be starting to be curious about this work, or you might not know anything about this work at all until you came across this book. We're all at different parts in our journey and our experience, and for those of us who survival strategies are still very protective, reflecting on a time that we felt more authentic or more alive might feel really threatening or scary in this moment.

So something that sounds like it should be a resource- that makes us feel good- might actually not make us feel good. And that's okay, because we know that it's those child consciousness parts of us that are getting afraid. So if you do this exercise and you notice that you feel a little tense, or you start to feel a little disconnected or sad or heavy, see if you can pause for a moment and notice, ah, that's my child consciousness. Those are my adaptive protective parts that are trying to keep me safe in this moment. Is there any part of me- maybe it's the tip of my pinky, or my little baby toe- that can have a little bit of presence in this moment to notice that just in this moment, even though my strategies are making me feel like I'm unsafe, I can feel the chair underneath of me, or I can feel that I am present in this moment. You might not be able to do that. And that's okay. But remember, this is all about titrating one little drop at a time. And finally, this week I want to talk about pillar one of the NARM model, clarifying what they refer to as the therapeutic contract and how you might be able to use this in your own life.

So while this is directed toward therapists, the idea here is that when you have had complex or developmental trauma or environmental ruptures, things can sometimes feel disorganized, overwhelming, or confusing. In fact, if you sit down and you try to plan your goals or what you want for yourself or whatever it is, it might feel either confusing- you're not sure- or you have, you know, a perfect five year plan, but you're actually disconnected from the emotional experience of that. There are all things that are part of your strategies, like there are things you want to achieve to try to look good so that you can keep your connections. What we want to support ourselves to do or our clients when we're in therapy is to really gain clarity about what they want for themselves outside of their strategies. That oftentimes, even in our personal lives, is this idea that, like, we're just trying to fix something, right? It's like, well, I want to be more organized, or I want to work out more or whatever it is. And when it's like, well, why do you want to do that? It always comes back to like trying to cover up something that we think is wrong with ourselves or shame.

In fact, there's a really cool activity that I'll often do with my client where we will talk about values and we will do a values sort where we look through values and pick our top values, but we take it an extra level where we look at each of the values and we figure out, is this a survival strategy or is this a value? And it can be pretty mind blowing to see that things we thought were our values in our life are actually part of those adaptive protective strategies that we've been using to keep ourselves safe. And when you've designed your life around a value that is actually a protective strategy, you're not going to be fully connected to the vitality and the emotional experience and the joy and connection of moving toward what you want for yourself. I love getting to do that, and maybe sometime I'll see if I can host a live version of that for some of you- if you would be interested in doing that- because it's such a valuable exercise.

But the thing to understand about this is we want to slow things down again (whether we're in therapy or when we're in our own personal life), and get clarity around what we want for ourselves. So we don't want other people to tell us what we want for ourselves. We don't want our therapist to tell us what we want for ourselves. We don't want social media to tell us what we want for ourselves. We want to go internally and find it. And maybe a part of you is saying, no, no, I really do want someone else to tell me what I want for myself because I'm not sure. That's okay. That might also be part of your survival strategy, where it is scary to get in connection to your own agency, and so you want someone else to tell you what to do. I have been there myself, no judgment at all, but that's something for us to be curious about. And so in that reflective exercise, you know, where you can look at something that you're struggling with and just seeing how it is to state what you want, you might notice that you feel a little anxiety or a little fear, a little heaviness. And that's okay if that happens.

Wanting things and letting ourselves want things can be really, really scary to those protective parts of us, and it can make us disconnect from our adult consciousness ourself and go back into a strategy that says it's not safe for you to want things, it's not safe for you to have needs. And so we always take this gently and with curiosity and without pressure. In fact, I probably work a little bit differently than they describe in this book here, where I give a lot more space in leeway around getting clear about what we want for ourselves, because I know it's so important to develop that felt sense of safety first, so that we can put that little pinky toe into our adult consciousness self to connect with what we want for ourselves. So it's really important to understand, because often times people will say, well, I know what I want for myself. And then again, it's that behavioral thing, right? It's like, I want to work out more. I want to eat healthier. I want to do better at my job or, you know, I want to make more money or whatever those things are, that those things are in pursuit of something else. And that's what we want to get curious about. Right?

So if you come in and say to me, I want to get better at following a routine. I want to start a morning routine and I want to get better at following it. No matter how hard I try, I might do it for a few days and then I quit. I might say, huh, okay. Got it. So you're wanting to to get better at following your morning routine? Okay, well, let's imagine that you devise this perfect morning routine and you stuck to it every single day. How is it you're imagining you would feel, and the person might say, hmm, well, I think I would feel more self-confident. Oh, okay. So you would feel more self-confident, huh? What is it about following your morning routine that would make you feel more self-confident? Well, I would just feel like I accomplish something, and I would be working out and taking care of my body, so I would be looking better. And, you know, I would just check off all these goals so I could go into my workday having more things done. It's like, wow, there's a lot of doing underneath of that, right? So let's imagine you did all those things and then you were more self-confident. How is it you're imagining you would feel going into the day? I’d say if I was more self-confident, I would feel less anxious. Oh, okay. So there's some anxiety underneath of here, huh? Okay. So if you weren't feeling anxious, how is it you'd like to feel? Well, I'd like to go into my day feeling a little bit more calm. Ah, okay. That's something we can get behind, right? That's something we can go underneath and say. Let's look at what's getting in the way of you feeling calmer. Let's look at what's driving some of this anxiety that's actually landing onto I gotta get this morning routine perfect. So that's kind of how we gain some clarity around what we want for ourselves. And then this fictitious example, we might find out that all of this morning routine was driven by this survival strategy. That is trying to get us to be, “good enough” so that we don't lose our connections. And that's totally different than trying to address that in a behavioral way by saying, well, have you tried setting an alarm to do the tasks? That's not going to get you to what you're wanting for yourself when what you're really wanting is to feel more calm and to feel more connected to yourself and to feel more safe and like you have agency in your life to be authentic. That's a totally different ballgame.

So the section I really want to highlight here is the section about how these different adaptive survival strategies might feel about being asked to state what they want. That the connection style might feel really unsafe because you're asking them to really show up and connect. You might even feel that with yourself. You might feel unsafe if you start to ask yourself what you want for yourself, you know, and attunement style they might feel really embarrassed or ashamed for having any needs at all, or letting themselves want things. The person who has more heavy orientation into the trust style might feel like it's too vulnerable to name those things, and that makes them feel weak and thus terrified. A person with the autonomy style might really feel backed into a corner. And so they might feel that there's some kind of right answer, some goal, and so they might feel a lot of internal pressure. And they might also, again, want to bat it back to the therapist to say, well, I want you to figure out what I should do. The love sexuality style has, again, a lot of pressure of wanting things to be perfect and feeling like they need to give polished answers. And so you can be curious about these things even with yourself, when you're thinking of what you want for yourself. If you notice resistance in yourself, try that neutral observation again of just saying, I wonder if that resistance might be part of my child consciousness, part of me who's trying to protect me from moving towards what I want for myself. That feels really, really terrifying because it used to be a threat for connection. That neutral observation is the best tool.

So that's where I want to stop for this week. I'm trying to keep these to 20 minutes, which I think is a reasonable amount of time, at least for me. That's about where my energy stops when I'm listening to something is right about 20 minutes, especially really heavy material like this. So we will continue on with pillar two and probably pillar three next time we meet. But I hope that this information is helpful for you, and I'd really love to hear from you. If you don't feel comfortable commenting in a public forum, I'd even love to hear from you just as a reply to this email of what you're noticing, what you're curious about, what you'd like clarification on from me. I'm really here to read the book along with you and sit down, have a cup of tea and talk about it. But I also want to provide clarification and or knowledge that I might have if you're curious about things that come up when you're reading this.

Also - we had the opportunity to meet last night live and discuss what we've been learning so far and what we've been curious about. We also talked about the survival strategies. So if you were not able to join us live, I will drop a link to the recording here in this post for you to watch and listen to me talking a little bit about those adaptive, protective survival strategies - I just ask that you don’t share this recording but just keep it as a resource for yourself.

So thanks again for being here. I'm really enjoying it and looking forward to it. I'll send a date soon for our final live meeting as we start wrapping up the book. And if you'd like to join us for reading “No Bad Parts” after this book, please- I would love to have you. I'm really looking forward to getting to read that one together. I actually haven't finished reading it myself, so I'm super excited.

And I do have a list of books that I recommend, including No Bad Parts on bookshop.org, which I will link here. It's a great place to buy books from because they ship from independent booksellers, which I love to support. So thanks so much and I'm wishing you a neutral to good week ahead. And thanks again for being here and connecting with me.

Wishing you a glimmering week ahead,

trisha

P.S. - if you want to learn more about the nervous system and getting unstuck, join me for a conversation on July 11th (live on Zoom but also recorded!). You can register here - I’m so looking forward to the opportunity to talk more about my favorite things! If you’d like to join, you can use code bookclub for 20% off as a thank you for supporting my work.

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