tiny sparks, big changes

Hello dear readers/listeners,

As we prepare to wrap up our read-a-long of No Bad Parts and transition to our next book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, I wanted to end with some free practices for you to keep in your back pocket as you continue to explore connecting to the Self, the Observer, and the Adult Conciousness. I hope you find this practice helpful.

We will begin our next read-a-long in April as I use this month to transition - as a thank you for being here, everyone will receive a free one-month subscription. Paid subscribers - all of your subscriptions are extended for a month. Free subscribers - feel free to use this month to listen to some of our book club posts and see if you’d like to join us in April!

If you enjoy what you learn here, feel free to share with a friend - it helps keep my work going :)

Wishing you tiny moments of neutrality and curiosity,

trisha

This episode is free this week to welcome our new readers/listeners :)

Welcome back to our No Bad Parts Read-A-Long. I’m so glad to have you here, and I know we’ve got quite a few new people this week. For those who are new, this is our little club where we come together to explore different books and healing modalities. We’ve previously gone through The Practical Guide to Healing Developmental Trauma, which explores NARM, the NeuroAffective Relational Model. Right now, we’re diving into No Bad Parts by Dr. Richard Schwartz, which focuses on Internal Family Systems (IFS).

Each week, we meet here to discuss a chapter, and I provide some interpretation to help you along. Whether you’ve read the book or not, it’s all good - you’re welcome to join, ask questions, or simply listen in and learn. As we wrap up No Bad Parts, I’m excited to share that our final live meeting will be on Saturday, February 22nd, at 11 a.m. Eastern Time. I’m hoping this time will allow some of our friends from Europe and other parts of the world to join us. If you can’t attend live, don’t worry, the meeting will be recorded, and you’re welcome to submit questions in advance.

Looking ahead, I’d love your input on what we explore next. One option is Unlocking the Emotional Brain by Bruce Ecker, which delves into Coherence Therapy. It’s a bit dense, but if there’s enough interest, we could study it together. If there isn’t another book we want to dive into, I’ve been considering doing some longer-form research or deeper video work. We could explore how to really get underneath some of these patterns in more practical ways - like a little trauma school, if you will. I’d love to hear what would feel supportive or connecting for you. This space is meant to be a connected community, and I thank every one of you for being here and exploring this work together.

As we start Chapter Eight, we’re diving into vision and purpose. From the Internal Family Systems model - or really any healing model -we know that as we gain more access to Self, we also gain more access to curiosity, compassion, and clarity. This leads us to connect more deeply to our values, vision, and purpose.

For those who saw my recent post on values through a survival strategy lens, you know how valuable it can be to start teasing apart what we truly value versus what protective parts or child-consciousness parts make us think we want. Protective parts, burdened by survival patterns, often hold the weight of trying to keep us and our exiles safe from terror, shame, or grief. This means that while we might feel we value certain things, we’re often stuck in patterns driven by survival rather than authentic desire.

For example, someone might say they value caring for others. As a therapist, of course, I see the importance of caring for others. But if that value stems from a protector part, it’s not about genuine care - it’s about avoiding one’s own needs, boundaries, or wants because they feel too unsafe. When protective parts are driving us, we may shut down, freeze, fawn, or dissociate to maintain a sense of safety.

This can lead to over-performing - taking care of everyone else’s needs at the expense of our own - to avoid the feeling of being “voted off the island.” It can be confusing, though, because those values may feel deeply important. And they might be! But if they’re driven by protective parts rather than Self, they’re rooted in fear, not authenticity.

As we begin to unburden our protective parts and exiles, these patterns relax. We then gain access to our authentic, altruistic selves, the parts of us that genuinely enjoy giving, creating, or helping without overriding our own needs. This creates a spaciousness within us, allowing for softer, more connected, and more loving parts of ourselves to emerge.

tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This week, we’re exploring Chapter Eight, which focuses on vision and purpose. In the IFS model, as we gain more access to Self, we naturally begin to uncover what we truly value and want for ourselves. This process often involves distinguishing between our authentic desires and those shaped by protective parts or survival strategies. For example, you might believe you value taking care of others, but upon reflection, you may find this stems from a protector part that fears setting boundaries or expressing your own needs.

Protective parts carry burdens, often rooted in past trauma, and work tirelessly to keep us safe. These parts may push us toward hyper-performing, dissociating, or intellectualizing as a means of survival. But as we unburden these parts and invite them into connection with Self, they can begin to relax. This creates spaciousness, allowing us to access the softer, more loving, and more creative parts of ourselves.

When we live a Self-led life, we get to shed layers of armor that we’ve been carrying. This doesn’t mean our personality changes - it means we become lighter and more authentic. With this newfound clarity, we start to notice values and desires that were previously hidden beneath survival strategies. Instead of forcing outcomes, we can approach our lives with curiosity, allowing our vision to emerge naturally.

However, this journey is not without challenges. As we connect with a Self-led vision, it’s common to experience backlash from our internal protector parts. These parts might voice doubts like, “Who do you think you are to pursue this?” or “You’ll never succeed.” This backlash is a natural response from parts that are trying to keep us safe. Instead of silencing these voices, we can acknowledge them, offer reassurance, and invite them to trust us.

Over time, with gentle curiosity and observation, we can rewire these old patterns. This process takes time and patience, but it leads to profound shifts. As we integrate our thoughts, emotions, and body sensations, we move closer to a state of alignment and flow. In this state, we’re not striving or controlling but rather moving with the rhythm of life, like a river.

Dr. Schwartz highlights the importance of integrating all parts of ourselves, likening it to a fruit salad rather than a smoothie. Each part retains its individuality while contributing to the whole. This perspective aligns beautifully with other modalities like NARM, which emphasizes making decisions from an adult consciousness while holding the complexities of life with compassion and curiosity.

As you continue your journey toward a Self-led life, notice what arises for you. Are there parts or patterns that feel particularly sticky? Are there values or desires that are beginning to emerge? This is an opportunity to explore these questions with curiosity and without judgment.

If you’ve listened to me for any period of time, you know we can’t start with an outcome. We can’t force our way toward what we want because if we do, we’re just overriding all those protector parts and exiles that have already been overridden in the past. Many of us have lived this way - over-functioning, overperforming, pushing our needs aside, and striving to be perfect. We’ve intellectualized, avoided emotions, and hidden our humanity.

As we become more Self-led, we realize we don’t need to pressure ourselves to get what we want. In fact, it’s when we slow down, get curious, and stop pushing that things start to become clear. When we’re in Self, there’s a sense of clarity, connection, and alignment. You may have heard of a flow state - that feeling when time seems to pass effortlessly, like when you’re reading a good book and look up to find an hour has gone by. That’s the type of experience we can access more and more when we live from Self.

We don’t need to strive toward what we want. Instead, we can move with the flow of life, like a river, and things come with more ease. This integration allows us to experience our thoughts, emotions, and body sensations without one …

Welcome back to our No Bad Parts Read Along. Can you believe we have made it here to chapter seven The Self in Action. I'm really excited to talk about this chapter today, and to dive further in into what it means to connect to the self and be self-led.

So it's really popular on social media right now to talk about attachment theory. And if you're not familiar with attachment theory, it's a basic idea that how we attach to our primary caregivers affects later how we attach to others in our life, romantic, platonic, and otherwise. And you can have a secure attachment, which means you are okay and comfortably attached. And if the person goes away and they come back, you can reconnect with them.

There is anxious attachment, which is when the person goes away or starts to pull back. There's a holding onto and this might be a person that gets called quote unquote needy, which of course is a sort of derogatory way of looking at what's actually a survival technique. But that's a person who's grasping, always trying to bring people in closer and closer, and is fearful of losing them. You also have an avoidant attachment, which is that person who kind of pulls back and pulls away, and they might stay detached and they might never fully show themselves to others. And if someone goes away, they might say, well, I don't care, I didn't need you anyway. And there's also the idea that we can have a disorganized attachment, which is sort of a combination of those two.

It's important to understand that it's normal for attachment, to flex and flow in different relationships and in different situations, and based on what's happening in our lives. So it's not like a Myers-Briggs test where you can just say, I'm an anxious attacher and that's that. But it's important to understand going into this, that IFS and that connection with the self takes this idea of attachment and brings it inside where the self or the adult consciousness, as we call it in NARM, gets to figure out how to build that good, secure attachment to those internal parts who might be anxious, or who might be avoidant, or who might be disorganized.

And this is really, really exciting because it means that we can start to repair and rebuild from those environmental ruptures we may have had with our caregivers, our teachers, our peers, or even in romantic or platonic relationships later in our life that have left us feeling uncertain and disconnected. We get the opportunity here to reconnect with the self who holds our secure attachment to these other parts. And as these parts start to trust the self and become, we become more self-led and more internal.

tiny sparks - trisha wolfe is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

We might actually find that our attachment patterns externally to people around us may start to shift little by little, as those neurons fire in a securely attached way that those pathways may become available to us in other relationships. So it may go from internal to external. And that's the coolest thing in the world to know that we have the capacity and the agency and the choice and the flexibility to start to pattern this by becoming the “good parent” or “good caretaker” or whatever it is that we never had in the first place. We get to bring in those young exiles who never got to be seen or held. We get to connect with the inner critic, the intellectuals or the perfectionists, the firefighter part of us that dissociates us. Over time, we get to become the primary caretaker of these parts, and that means that we no longer have to rely on other people to try to take care of these parts.

Now, it's important to understand we're meant to heal in relationship. We're meant to heal and connection. And so it's normal and expected that when you're in therapy or a relationship or whatever it is, that that person is part of your well-being and part of your regulation. But what can happen is subconsciously, at times, we look to other people to try to heal these parts of us. And while they can play a role in it, we also need to be connected to these parts of us as well. And so we can start to connect to other people relationally more from our adult consciousness, more from our self. And it can be really hugely shifting to relationships.

When the person, the therapist, or whoever can be sort of that secondary caretaker as Doctor Schwartz calls it, to those parts instead of the primary caretaker. Right now, for many of us, that might be reversed, where we're looking to others to try to fill that hole. Now, again, I want to say I'm not one of those people who's like, you have to love yourself to have others love you. I firmly believe we are meant to heal in connection and in support with other people. But if we are not consciously aware of these patterns, of these survival strategies of these parts of us, then our relationships may continue to feel unbalanced where we are all in or where we're very pulled back and it feels anxiety producing and it feels scary and we feel disconnected. And so we might never get to feel an authentic, balanced, connected relationship. And again, that can feel so dissatisfying. It can build up resentment. It can build up anger and sadness and fear. So this is such a cool opportunity not only to change how we relate internally, but externally as well.

This is also why in therapy, sometimes it can feel unbalanced. If you're working with a therapist who doesn't understand the parts or the child consciousness of developmental and relational trauma, because the therapist can get hooked in with their parts and think they need to fix you. And by doing so, they may unintentionally take your agency away from you where they come in as the fixer of time and time again. That might feel good to some parts of you, but it doesn't lead to you over time. Connecting to your agency, your choice, and yourself. You might also be labeled as disruptive or self-sabotaging, or like you're not really trying because you might feel really resistant to this person who's trying to fix you.

And so understanding that when you go into therapy, that person can hold space and be curious and be a stand in participant in your nervous system, meaning they can lend their nervous system and their self to you while you're exploring. They cannot, nor should they be the one who fixes you, because that doesn't lead you to becoming a self led person who can, who can walk through their life with agency and connection and authenticity and curiosity and neutrality and all of those things. So if you've had that experience in therapy, just know that you're not alone. And it's something that can happen as therapists, systems and parts and bodies and minds can get hooked in unintentionally as well.

A big part of this chapter is dedicating to Doctor Schwartz going through a session with Ethan and Sarah. And in this he is exploring connecting to these different parts in each of them. Where Ethan is exploring a part of himself that he calls the destroyer of injustice. And this part is very fiery, very justice driven, all about being deeply committed to protecting the planet and trying to fight systemic oppression. But it was manifesting in a way that created some tension in their relationship. For example, his partner was wanting to build an addition to their small house, and that was so activating to this part in Ethan because he wants to live smaller for the earth and talks about there being homeless people out there who don't have anything.

But it was creating a lot of disharmony in the system between Ethan and Sarah, and making her feel like she was unable to have her needs met as well. And I think this is a valuable read or listen if you want to go back through and listen to the full session, but it's such a cool opportunity to notice what it's like connecting to these parts and how some parts can have really important things, like, of course, fighting for injustice can also get burdened with other experiences. And as this session unfolds, Ethan is able to connect to this part of himself, burdened by the grief and guilt of losing his father to a drunk driver, and that that loss really left him rejecting everything around him that could be considered superficial and pushed him towards this intense drive for justice.

And as Ethan was supported in exploring this from an IFS perspective, he found that this part actually held this belief that he was somehow responsible to his father's death. This old belief about a childhood decision to skip a basketball game his father invited him to. And what a burden. What a burden that this part had taken on, and that driving through this injustice, this singular focus, with the real difficulty connecting emotionally that left him disconnected from those around him. And as he was able to release this burden, he could connect to some compassion and understanding and find the dual role of this destroyer of injustice. Protecting, of course, Ethan's all for the earth and driving him to act, but also isolating him due to its intensity, and by unburdening that grief and guilt carried by that part, bringing that self in to be self-led and listened to that justice driven part, that he could find a way to honor his purpose and his drive without letting it take over and isolate him.

It's a really interesting and fascinating, fascinating session. If you'd like to go back in and read the full session, you can really feel this reconnection between Ethan and Sarah and space for each of them to feel their feelings and connect from their self, and not letting the parts drive a wedge between them. Understanding. When we connect to those parts, we can also connect to others. And what I thought was so lovely about Doctor Schwartz sharing the session.

Hello and happy new year and welcome back to our No Bad Parts read-along.

We are starting part two together on self-leadership and within this chapter there is an exercise called the path meditation and I just wanted to remind you if you missed my earlier episode I have a recording on that for you.

And it's a wonderful practice to be curious about as we move into this next phase of connecting to the self and building the self up as a leader.

As we dive into this chapter on healing and transformation, I think we hit upon something that is a core part of the IFS model as well as the NARM model and something that I think can be such a paradigm shift for many of us because oftentimes in the world and in therapy there's this idea that these behaviors that we do are bad and all we need to do is just change our bad behaviors and then we'll be better and our life will be better and we'll be the person we want to be.

But when we understand that those behaviors, emotions, impulses, thoughts, emotions are not bad or defective or sick, but instead are a part that are playing a role to protect you and keep you safe, that we're trying to keep you connected to the world and to people around you, well, that's a major paradigm shift.

Of course, the name of the book is No Bad Parts, and IFS teaches us that these parts and everything they hold are not inherently bad, but are carrying burdens and playing roles to protect us and doing the best they can to navigate life based on the lenses that they hold.

And when we start to understand that these parts aren't a sign that there's something wrong with us or that we're broken, but that we're protecting ourselves from something, that allows us to shift into that curious observer, that self.

Remembering, noticing and observing is responding. Noticing and observing these parts and experiences is what we're here to do.

NARM, too, reminds us that these survival patterns are adaptations. And they're actually really clever adaptations. They're not pathology algorithms. They're the body and the mind and the nervous system working together to try to keep us safe, try to keep us in connection when things feel overwhelming and when systems don't make sense.

As we've discussed, systems are systems, whether it's our internal system or family system or a work system. Systems want to maintain that homeostasis, meaning keeping things the same.

And so oftentimes in literature about families that are impacted by addiction and substance use, they'll talk about these roles, the scapegoat, the hero, the lost child, the golden child.

Those roles are simply names we give to the parts that people are playing in the system to try to maintain the homeostasis, to try to maintain safety and connection.

If those families are supported towards more well-being, more safety, and a new homeostasis, then those roles drop because those are not innate to the person, but rather things that develop in a system to try to keep them safe and in connection.

And of course, it's likely that we have parts of us too, or ourselves, who are connected, who are online.

But those parts sometimes get hidden behind these other parts that are trying to protect us. So oftentimes in our own self-exploration, we're working to connect with these burdened parts to help them to feel safe and to transform into the other side for more access to the self nature of those parts.

So an important part here is to revisit those four goals of IFS. To liberate the parts from their roles and return them to their natural states, where we can access the gift of these parts.

Like a part that is an intellectualizer might become a part that helps us plan and dream and be connected to the future and to carry out tasks.

The second goal, restore trust in the self. And that is where that path meditation that I recorded can come in very handy, where we're being curious about supporting the parts and trusting the self.

We're rebuilding that internal relationship. Reharmonizing the inner system, so we're building a new homeostasis, a new sense of safety, where we can feel safe with those parts unburdened and at rest.

Whereas right now, when we try to rest and those parts try to sit down, we likely don't feel safe. And that's because of the homeostasis and the predictive patterns in our brain that says, resting, relaxing, being authentic, being ourselves, having autonomy, connecting, those things are not safe.

So if you try to do so from yourself, those parts will try to protect you at all costs by stopping you.

And that's what oftentimes people will call the quote-unquote self-sabotaging behavior.

We know it's actually not self-sabotaging. It's very protective. It's coming from those managers, those firefighters who are all working together to try to protect that burdened exile who feels so terrified, so rageful, and so grief-filled.

And so when we think of healing or transformation, we're not trying to change you.

Oftentimes people ask me, well, who am I if I'm not a perfectionist? Or who am I if I'm not an intellectualizer? Who am I if I'm not focusing on everyone else's needs?

And it can be really scary to think, I don't know who I am. What is my identity? If these things that I thought were my identity are actually part of our protective parts.

And the good thing is you are you and you will still be you.

And when we look at the word heal from this perspective, we're looking at this idea to make whole, to bring these parts of you back in, make the system whole again, build up a felt sense of safety for you so that you can be yourself without the burdens and the protective nature trying to shut you down.

So if you imagine right now that yourself is locked up in a castle, in a turret, looking out, and there's the moat, and there's the alligators, and there's the sentries, and there's the guards, and those are all the protective parts trying to prevent yourself from getting out.

Why? Because if yourself gets out, you might do something that would cause pain to the exile. So the exile is also deeply hidden away in there.

But those protective parts don't want to let you out because you might do something to cause a problem. So you will still be you—it's just the guards will step away, the bridge will go across the moat, and you will be you without all of the burdens.

And that is when we get to have choice and flexibility and agency. And it's not a magic trick. It doesn't mean suddenly our life is perfect—though I wish it did—but what it means is we have that choice.

We can be in the present, we can make choices that are in alignment with what we want for ourselves. We can be curious. We can try things on.

Dr. Schwartz says an exile is healed when the self retrieves it from where it's stuck in the past.

Remember, we can't approach the exile without permission from the protective parts.

So as we step into this next part of the book, referring to the book this time versus a part internally, as we step forward to this part two, what we're being curious about is building up that trust with the internal systems so that the protectors can feel free, they can be unburdened, they can take on new valuable roles, and eventually the exile can be freed.

And all that energy that your nervous system and brain are spending gripping so hard to protect you and to try to keep you from being triggered and to try to protect your exile gets freed up.

And that's where the flexibility and choice and agency and feelings and presence and all of that goodness comes in.

And it's the very same in the NARM model where we're not trying to change you as a person. We're not trying to get rid of parts of you. We're being curious about what happens as you're able to step more into the adult consciousness and bring that child consciousness part of you in.

Then you get to see the world through adult lenses.

And so instead of something like setting a boundary with your boss feeling like a life threat because your exile part is so completely triggered and terrified, it might feel li…

Hey there Substack pals! In the spirit of practicing what I preach, I’m taking this week to rest and regroup. While there won’t be an episode on a chapter this week, I wanted to offer you another IFS guided meditation from the upcoming chapter in No Bad Parts called The Path. I invite you to join me in a curiosity of connecting to your parts and your Self as you traverse the path in your mind’s eyes. Drop me a line and let me know what you discover. Wishing you a gentle end to 2024 and a soft welcome to 2025.

I'm back to our No Bad Parts read-along together. This week, we are diving into Chapter Five on mapping our inner systems.

So thus far, we've started to learn a little bit about these internal parts that make up the system of us—that perhaps we're not just one individual mind, but an amalgamation of all the developmental experiences we've had in our lives that have created these different neural pathways, survival strategies, or parts, as they are called in Internal Family Systems.

Remembering as we go into exploring deeper these parts that this is a big paradigm shift from how many of us have been taught to see the world. And you can take in as much or as little as you'd like to or as feels available to you right now, knowing that whatever you uncover through this experience, all of these parts inside of us developed in pursuit of keeping us safe and keeping us in connection with the world around us.

We are biologically wired to stay in connection with our caregivers when we are young. And when we are able to, because of environmental ruptures, these protective parts emerge to try to keep us going—to try to keep us through the fight, flight, freeze, or fawn that comes up when it feels like our caregivers can't meet our needs. And so they might not make sense to you now as an adult, but they made sense at the time.

And first up are these parts Dr. Schwartz refers to as the exiles. These are often those much younger parts of us. And maybe you've heard of this idea of an inner child—that that could be those exile parts. And those young parts of us that hold all of the playfulness, the creativity, the fun, the trusting, the innocent, and the openness that we have when we're young children and we're exploring the world.

And they're also very, very sensitive parts because if you think about us as young children, we don't have the cognitive complexity to be able to think through and make sense out of things. And we haven't fully developed a sense of how to take care of ourselves and soothe ourselves in the world because we are children. And we rely on our caregivers and the people around us to co-regulate with us. So we are very sensitive when we are young. Things that are scary or hurtful, we feel that really, really strongly when we're young children.

And we'll often say that young children have tantrums or they have meltdowns. And what we know that's actually happening is they are very sensitive and they need co-regulation. And so it makes a lot of sense that they might have a quote-unquote meltdown or a big emotional experience when something happens.

And these are also the parts of us who hold those biggest burdens from the environmental ruptures, attachment ruptures, or traumas that we might experience when we're young. And when that happens, it shifts our young self from that fun, playful self to that wounded, terrified, maybe shut-down self.

And this is when some of those core beliefs start to change. And we might move into that, I am worthless, no one loves me, there's something wrong with me at my core, I don't deserve to be loved.

Then as adults now, when those parts blend with us, and for many of us, our exiles are blended with our self because of our lived experiences, then those beliefs, I don't deserve anyone to love me, that becomes the lens through which we see the world. That becomes our paradigm. And we are carrying around all of the time those deep, deep burdened emotions that those younger parts of us feel.

And that can really impact our ability to function in the world as a quote-unquote adult, as we are living in our adult bodies when we are holding the lens that there is something wrong with us and we don't deserve to be loved. And that can also create behaviors that might not make sense as an adult, but make a lot of sense for this burdened, terrified exile.

I want to remind you again that these beliefs or emotions that these younger parts of us hold don't always make sense to our adult selves, and that's because they happened in the mind of a child. And it doesn't always have to be a huge life-altering trauma that can create these burdened experiences.

An example that I use often is, again, think of if you had two parents who themselves were very rational people. They grew up in homes where emotions were not talked about. And so to them, emotions are somewhat forbidden. They don't go there. They don't really even have access to go tthere. They closed that part of them off a long time ago. Now they have this wonderful, fun, playful child who they love very much. But because children have big emotions, when you have a big emotion, even an exciting emotion like surprise or joy or playfulness or fear or whatever might happen when we're young children, their systems feel overwhelmed by that. They don't know what to do with that. And so they calm you down. They shut down your emotions. They distract you. They send you to your room until you can come back out and behave or be part of the family.

And no one is telling you in this scenario that they hate you or that they hate your emotions or that you're too much. But the felt sense experience is you can sense as a child, even if you're not consciously aware of it, that your parents' systems are shutting down when you feel emotions.

And when we're trying to stay in connection to those around us at all costs, then we will learn very quickly the pattern of, my parents, it seems that my parents love me more and that I can stay more in connection with them when I shut my emotions down. And that might be how we develop a quote-unquote intellectualization part.

And again, as part of our coping or being in the world is to try to push these parts of us away, that is again how we might move into an intellectualization, rationalization, people-pleasing, perfectionism—anything we can do to try to control our internal state and push away these hard emotions that these exile parts of us hold, we will do that.

That is part of the paradigm that we've learned, right? Where it's like, Just pick yourself up, move on, pick yourself up by your bootstraps, kind of get over it. Stop being so sensitive. We learn to do the same things to ourselves and then we collude with what was done to us, where then we as adults push these exile parts of us away. We push our emotions away. We push what makes us human away because it feels like too much. It feels too overwhelming.

And for many of us, the more we try to push those parts of us away, the more they try to come out. That's why strategies like perfectionism, for example, never work in the long run because you try really, really, really hard to be perfect and then this part of you that is holding all these really deep terrors that you can never be perfect and that you'll always mess things up, sees you pushing them away more and more. And so then they'll come out and then you'll make a mistake or you won't be perfect or you'll say something you didn't mean to say and you'll beat yourself up more. And that is how this cycle can unconsciously continue.

Dr. Schwartz talks about these sort of mysterious overreactions and really being unsure, like why do small things hit us so hard? Why does making a teeny little mistake feel like the end of the world? What I'll often say to people I'm working with is that if it feels disproportionate, it's likely there's something else going on there. Maybe you've seen a post that's often shared on social media that says, If it feels hysterical, it's probably historical. That's because it's that old pathway, that neural pathway, that predictive pattern, that vulnerable part of us coming up.

The more of these challenging experiences and environmental ruptures we had as a child, the more delicate things will feel in the present and the more dangerous because there's constantly an opportunity where it feels like we are making a mistake or messing something up or risking a connection, and that that is very triggering to these exile parts of us. And their behaviors can become quite extreme to try to protect us from these intense emotions, behaviors, impulses, and experiences that we hold.

When we have exiles, we will also have what is called in IFS, managers. And managers are protectors that are pressed into service, essentially. So you can think of them as our inner children who have been parentified or made to become faux adults, F-A-U-X, faux adults. Oftentimes when I talk about this idea of a faux sense of protection that comes from managers, people might get upset and think that I'm being offensive or saying that it's not a worthwhile tool. And that's not what I'm saying at all.

It gives us a faux sense of safety. And the reason why I say that is because perfectionism, for example, might keep us feeling safe and in control, but we can't be ourselves. We can't be authentic. We can't fully connect with those around us. And thus, it's not a real felt sense of safety that lets us be ourselves. It is a manager. It is a faux sense of safety that is taking on the role of trying to control absolutely everything inside you and in the world around you so that nothing triggering or activating happens that might scare the exile.

And so they might control our relationships, our appearance, our work performance. Every single aspect of our life, these parts will try to control. This is where the inner critic lives.

This is where the inner critic lives.

This is where the intellectualizer lives.

These parts are very, very convincing and often sound like the self or like in NARM, we call it the adult consciousness. And those of you who found me because of my work with intellectualizers know exactly what I mean.

I hope this message finds you awash in curiosity, bathed in neutrality, full of spaciousness.

As we head into what is, for many, a difficult season, I wanted to offer you a simple daily meditation to support taking a few moments of connecting with yourself, however, you are feeling in the moment.

While the practice is based on Internal Family Systems and the No Bad Parts book, you are more than welcome to join in even if you haven’t read the book or don’t even know what Internal Family Systems is. Know that when I reference parts, I am talking to our deep experiences that are often hidden away inside of us, the ways we developed to keep ourselves safe in situations that felt anything but. Maybe you’ve called yourself a people pleaser, an intellectualizer, a perfectionist. Maybe you’ve said you’re “bad at boundaries” or “never follow through.”

Together in the moment we hold the idea that everything we do is in pursuit of maintaining connection with those around us and trying to survive, while also knowing it is possible to shift, change, and make room for change for those older patterns that served us in the past but may not be anymore. Each and every part of you is welcome here, even if you’re not ready to welcome them in yet. Join me for this short practice of anchoring in neutrality and curiosity, of working with our brains and nervous systems instead of against them. See you what you notice. Pause. Restart. Stop. It’s all one big experiment.

See you out there :)

Trisha

Welcome back book club pals! I had such a lovely time being live with you a couple of weeks ago for our little fireside chat, and we will definitely do one more while we are in this process together. There's something just so fun about getting to see each other's faces, hear each other's voices, and connect lives. So thank you for being there. If you couldn't be there, no worries at all. Thanks for watching the recording and sending me your thoughts. I always really value that.

Chapter four is a really important chapter because it's going to talk a little bit about systems theory, which is such an important thing to understand when we're understanding ourselves, our internal experiences, and how we react with the world around us. As always, just a reminder with any of this exploration or any of these exercises, it's normal that parts of you might feel challenged or activated. Some of your parts might not be ready to trust you, engage with you, or engage with this process. And that's okay. And that's why I always encourage us to take this one little drop at a time. So anything that we're learning here or any of the exercises, you don't have to feel any pressure to do them or to dive in. You can just be curious. And if you feel resistant to doing them or activated by them, it gives you an opportunity to be curious about which part of you or which parts of you are coming up.

It also doesn't mean that we have to avoid activation. If you try on some of the exercises in the book and you notice activation, that can be really scary to those of us who maybe didn't have anyone with us when we were scared or nervous or activated when we were younger. It's also cultivating to know that it's okay to feel a little bit of activation, and if you can access enough of the Self to be with the activation, even if it's just for a moment, you're also cultivating the understanding to the rest of your parts that you, the Self, the adult consciousness in NARM terms, can handle that activation. That's different than when we're children, when we're young and in events happened where things feel really scary and no one is with us; that feels like a threat to our lives, because we're totally relying on people around us to take care of ourselves and to make sure things are okay. If they're not doing that, our nervous system and brain are going to signal that we're unsafe. So we actually will feel terror when there's activation. But when we are adults, we know that we can handle a little bit of activation, and that can be part of the process too.

So I encourage you to be curious, track and notice what's happening. And if it's not the time for the activity, it's not the time. But maybe there's just a little experiment. Could I stay with this activation for five seconds more than I normally do? And what happens? What parts emerge? What do they have to say? How do I feel? There’s always an opportunity for more curiosity. So I say that specifically as the exercise around working with the challenging protector was there from the last chapter, to just be gentle, be neutral, be curious; and if you can't access any of those, that's okay. You can come back into the space, come back into connecting with the space around you, and come back into neutrality when you can.

In chapter four, Dr. Schwartz is exploring this idea of systems thinking, which is part of what helped him develop this model. And in systems thinking, it's really a framework to allow us to see the different patterns and relationships, the ways that our inner world engage both internally and with the world around us. So a lot of times I'll think of systems theory as gears, and gears are all together with each other. So when one gear turns, the other gear turns, and we don't know which way the gear is going to turn necessarily. So we don't know if we try working with a challenging protector, for example, if another part might get more scared or it might calm down, or it might trust us more, or it might trust us less; we don't know that if we engage with our parts and we start to shift, if people around us might shift, they will. Because when we change, we change the systems that we are in and we don't know if they will change for the better or for the worse. That's kind of part of being in a system that we don't know. We can't necessarily predict how things are going to change and same internally, but we can be curious and observe.

It's really a bigger picture way of noticing we don't exist in isolation. Our parts don't exist in isolation. We are all part of a bigger system. And that this perspective really came about when biologists were studying cells and they couldn't really figure out how they formed these living organisms, and they started to come into understanding that it was a system where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. And such a big part of Dr. Schwartz's work that influenced the creation of internal family systems was this idea that we do not exist outside of the context of the systems that we are in, so slapping a diagnosis on someone often ignores the context of their systems, of their symptoms, and how these different ways that they behave-like maybe harming themselves- actually serves them within the systems that they exist in internally and externally. So we don't want to just reduce our experiences to a “symptom” or a behavior problem, but rather to start to understand how they fit into our internal systems and the systems around us, our relational patterns with our Self and our relational patterns with the world and our family and everyone around us. This really allowed him to start to understand that we have this internal system. And that always brings us back to the context that everything we do is in the context of our brain and our body and our nervous system.

If you've listened to me in other ways, you've heard me talk about predictive patterns in the brain and that those form based on past experiences to help us predict what's going to happen in the present and what's going to happen in the future. And that's really, really important to understand, because those predictive patterns are formed based on the systems in which we live. If we learn that every time we have an emotion, we're going to be punished or sent to our room or yelled at in the system that we are in, then we start to develop an internal system where when we'll shut down emotions; we'll just hold them down, we'll shut them down, we'll go up into the intellectualization/rationalization. Or if we feel an emotion, we'll start to criticize ourselves before anyone else can't. Those aren't just behavior problems or internal thought patterns; those are systemic ways of being within the context of the system that you're in. Those are developmental patterns to respond to the environment or system that you grew up in. So when we start to understand our experience as part of the greater system, both internally and externally, then we understand that our symptoms are behaviors- the things we don't like about ourselves- actually make a lot of sense in the context of our system to keep us safe and keep us in connection with those around us.

There are some examples that Schwartz shares in this chapter- if you haven't yet had a chance to read them- about a client who is suffering from bulimia, and this internal cycle where one of the critic parts would trigger some feelings of worthlessness, and then the bingeing would come in as a coping mechanism, which would then activate the critic further and perpetuate the loop. So that's part of the system, right? Where the inner critic part is triggering feelings of worthlessness, then the behavior comes out that we might say, like, oh, you need to stop the binging, right? You need to stop the purging. You need to stop doing these things. But in this example, we can understand that it's part of the bigger system. If we work with the critic, we work with that part that is activating some of these events. And we can understand the critic is there to keep us safe in some way based on our past experiences. Then when that slows down and it stops triggering feelings of worthlessness, the behavior of the bingeing and purging may be less available. We might want to do it less, or we might not feel the urge to do it. I always want to be really clear when talking about something like this, that everyone's experience is different and we have to treat people where they are. So we have to understand that not everybody who is struggling with an eating disorder or self-harm or anything like that can jump right into doing this work. There might need to be some stabilization work first, so please know that you can honor your own process. Work with your own therapist. These are just examples to help understand how these systems work.

Speaking of the systems that we're in, Dr. Schwartz was very curious about this idea that we as humans are bad. We are, at our core, bad. Civilization is bad, and that there's just this really thin layer, really thin veneer that protects us from our core primitive, selfish instincts. And we see a lot of that in society where we are so punitive toward other people, and we treat people as if they are bad, if they do things that we consider bad. For example, the war on drugs: that there's an idea that if you use drugs, you're bad and you must be punished by being put in prison or treated really horribly. And that really influences the way we see ourselves and the way we see people around us when we think that they are bad. Instead of understanding human behavior as a way that we try to protect ourselves, the way that we try to keep ourselves in connection with other people, and a way that we try to cope or survive an internal feeling that is really unsafe, or an external feeling that is really unsafe. And this is where we get the name of the book, No Bad Parts. What if we didn't have to see parts of ourselves as bad? Even as we take in information from the world that says, if you do this, you're bad. If you do this, you're not trying hard enough. You know, we have books like Atomic Habits that are like, well, you just need to learn how to access your discipline. And if you can't do this, there's something wrong with you. It's like everything in our society boils down to, well, if you can't do this good thing or the thing that everybody else is doing, there must be something wrong with you and you must be bad.

Hello and welcome back to our No Bad Parts Book Club/Read along. It’s really exciting to continue to deepen our understanding of this model together. I'm excited to let you know that we will be having our little fireside pop up live chat about the book: Monday, November 18th at 6 p.m. until 7 p.m. Eastern time. Not to worry if you can't attend live. I k…

Hi book club, and welcome back to our next little episode together exploring No Bad Parts.

I loved getting to read through all of your comments and hear your curiosities. Of course, you're more than welcome to post in the chat too, and if you don't feel like leaving a comment but you still want to ask the question, you can actually reply directly to this email and it'll come right to my inbox. I know there was a question about schedule, and I know typically a book club would have a pretty stringent schedule to stick to, but I'm sort of tentative about that. I know that might not fit with how some of you like to do things, but it’s because I really like to feel into as I'm recording the episode how much information starts to feel like enough or too much. And yes, that can differ from person to person. So I'm sort of relying on my own tracking of myself and my experience.

But I do have a lot of experience as a teacher and a therapist of trying to feel out what is a good amount of information for people without sending us into overwhelm. Those of us who like to intellectualize and really be up in our head - and I'm one of them- who might want a quicker pace - they want to take in the information, they want to really have it in. And that's okay. Everyone is welcome here. And I honor all of our different protector parts, but I'm a huge fan of slowing things down and slowing them down further and slowing them down further.

And you'll hear me say that a lot! Now my nervous system is the opposite and my nervous system wants to go fast, fast, fast, and learn everything. But I know that the language of our nervous system, when we are in our Self or our adult consciousness is actually slow. So we may do a chapter every time. We may do two chapters…We will find out together.

One more thing I want to mention briefly before we dive in is a lot of you really resonated with what I shared about environmental failures, and I'm so glad that maybe that's helping you see your experience in a little bit of a different light. Of course, we are never here to blame parents or caregivers, and this isn't really a catharsis process where we go back and rage against the people in your early life- teachers, caregivers, etc.- who may have had environmental failures with you, but rather it's an opportunity for us to be curious about what our own experience may have been and how that may impact us here in the present.

And again, it can be so subtle. Like, for example, maybe you were a gifted child and that didn't get seen. And so in school you often felt on the outside of things or bored and you might have gotten in trouble for being bored. Or maybe you didn't participate because you were so far ahead in the material, and it just created this sense of being on the outside, from your classmates and from your teacher. And you can understand that humans are made to be in connection to others, but particularly as children, we're developing that capacity of who we are and who we are in relationship to others, and what connection feels like with others. That can actually feel so, so scary. And so something as “simple” as that can create this need to protect ourselves, to keep our true self hidden away, because we realize that if we're ourselves, we might be considered unacceptable to others.

Now, as we left off last time, we did not explore the exercises together. And you heard me say, and you heard me say again, that I'm a huge fan of taking it slow. This first exercise here is an introduction to getting to know our parts and specifically our protector parts. So sort of similarly to a mindfulness practice where you're noticing what's happening and what is wanting your attention. And then just getting curious. When we are learning to track and observe ourselves, we have different pathways or doorways into our experience. That is often thoughts, emotions and body sensations, and sometimes those images, impulses and behaviors as well. You're going to hear us emphasize a lot this idea of observing and observing thoughts, emotions and body sensations. And when we say thought, we don't mean thinking or intellectualizing, but rather connecting with the story, the story that these different parts of us hold. So it's not something you can try to rationally or intellectually think your way into. And that can be frustrating to some of us, which is okay, because then we get the opportunity to notice the part of us that feels frustrated.

Remember, when you're trying out this exercise of getting to know a protector, what you're really doing is just noticing and observing. And that is what is really similar to the NARM model, where we're just being curious, we're noticing and observing. We're not trying to make anything happen. And literally just by sitting and trying to notice, you might have a part of you come out that doesn't want you to try and notice. And that's perfect because there is an opportunity to observe a different part of you.

As you'll see from this exercise, IFS offers an opportunity to communicate with these parts and ask these parts what it might want you to know, or what it might need from you. And if you're just diving into this book for the first time, this might feel like a lot. It might feel silly, it might feel hard. It might feel activating. All of those things are okay. I want to give you permission to know that you don't have to do these exercises exactly as they're described here right now. In fact, it's okay to wait until we get more into the book before you even try this exercise in the first chapter at all. It's okay if it feels clunky or weird or stressful or anxiety producing. If you start to notice some activation, you can see if you have enough of yourself or observer online to notice the part that is activated. And when you do that, you're invoking the IFS principle of unblending, where you're a little bit separate from that part for a moment because you're noticing it, you're observing it from yourself, and maybe you observe it for a split second, and then you feel like you go into anxiety or shutdown or freeze or disconnection or intellectualization. That's okay. That's actually really good information for you to notice and pause and see if you can, as I call it, dip a pinky back into the present to find yourself.

Because this is a book, and not an individual therapy session, it goes more quickly than I typically would with clients, which is why- again, I know I'm a broken record-there's an invitation to slow things down and notice that maybe now's not the time for this exercise. Similarly, with the second exercise, maybe it's the time that you can be curious about mapping some of these parts and following a trailhead, as Richard Schwartz calls it- where you're just noticing and following the different sensations and experiences that come up. Again, though, if you're here and you're curious about this book, it's very possible that you've had some trauma sometime in your life, even if your trauma was just, “an environmental failure” or several environmental failures as children. And that means that we need to go slow, as much as we might want to resist that. I would really encourage you to allow yourself to just be in the information and trust your instinct to know that the time to do these exercises will become clear to you.

Now as we dive into chapter two. We're coming back into that term of blending and exploring why parts might blend. When blending happens, essentially that part of us, or that neural pathway in our brain that is predicting what is happening in the present, and the emotions, thoughts, stories, impulses and body sensations that go along with that part or that pathway in our brain take over.

That becomes the primary pathway in our brain; that becomes the primary part, which sort of obscures our capital s Self. We don't feel separateness from that part in that moment. Instead, we become that part. In those moments, we are not in our self, but rather in that old experience. So we could have that overwhelming fear, that anger, the freeze, the disconnection, the apathy, all of that will come on and feel as if it's happening right in the present moment. This happens again because our brain is trying to predict what's going to happen in the present, based on the past. So if something happens in the present that makes our brain think the same thing is going to happen, then our brain is going to execute that pattern to say, okay, this is what we needed to do in the past. And so that part steps forward.

Let's say that when you were a child, your home was very tense and there was a lot of arguing and a lot of fighting, and it was really terrifying for you as a child. So you start to feel anxious and scared, and your heart would be pounding, and you would either have to freeze and shut down and run and hide, or maybe you became extra sweet and extra kind and extra good and tried to make everything okay between your parents. Then let's say you're in the present and you're out to dinner with some friends. They have a good relationship, but you can tell that things are tense between them. Maybe they had a little bit of a disagreement. Everything's safe. You're not responsible for these people. You're an adult. But the pathway in your brain is saying, oh my gosh, that same unsafe thing is happening. I need to freeze and shut down, or I need to be super on and make everything okay so that they'll be happy with each other and I'll be okay.

And that part is the part of us that becomes active instead of the Self. So that threat feels like it's happening right in the moment so that hypervigilance is there, the freeze or dissociation is there, the “people pleasing” or inner critic or shame is there. That is blending. It's important. You know that blending can happen in crisis moments, but it can also just happen subtly in a daily experience. Maybe part of your day to day experience is the perfectionist part of you is always there feeling like you have to work constantly to avoid failure. So you always have this little undercurrent of hypervigilance and perfectionism. But then when something occurs that can trigger you, like for example, some feedback, then you might feel a surge of the emotions related to that part of rage or panic or shame and not really feel sure, where that's coming from.

But it's important to know that in those moments the Self is not gone. It can be obscured like the sun during an eclipse, but it's still there. It's still present. We know that when we're able to observe and be curious and un-blend, our Self or our adult part will be there again.

Blended parts play a huge role in how we view the world. And again, if you want to envision this with me as a part that takes over or as a neural pathway, it makes a lot of sense that when we're in those parts, it's as if we're experiencing the world as if we are those parts. And oftentimes those parts have developed in our younger childhood experiences, which is why in NARM we call that the child consciousness experience. And so when we are blended with those parts, we're experiencing the world as if we are a younger part of us, which is why things will feel like a threat to our lives that are not actually a threat to our lives as adults.

So, for example, if as a child, we felt we had to be perfect to keep the peace in our home, then any potential for messing something up or not getting a A+ was an opportunity for a threat to our connection to our family, and thus a threat to connection to our life. Being voted off the island was what was at stake. So then in our adult experience, when we get feedback that might sting a little bit, instead of feeling as an adult. Well, I can work on this or I can discuss this or it's okay to make a mistake. I can learn and grow from this. Instead, when we blend with that younger part of us, it feels again as if there was an actual threat to our life, which is why we might feel the deep terror or rage.

It's important to remember that these protective parts of us are only focused on keeping us safe. They don't care if we're happy. They don't care if we're in connection. They cannot recognize the thing, the nuance of things that are happening around us.