Speaker 1: I hate the power of positive thinking. I hate positive psychology.
Speaker 1: I had all the Dalai Lama. I don't hate him,
Speaker 1: but I hate his philosophy. Welcome to the one you
Speaker 1: feed Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of
Speaker 1: the thoughts we have, quotes like garbage in, garbage out,
Speaker 1: or you are what you think ring true. And yet
Speaker 1: for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us.
Speaker 1: We tend toward negativity, self pity, jealousy, or fear. We
Speaker 1: see what we don't have instead of what we do.
Speaker 1: We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit.
Speaker 1: But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It
Speaker 1: takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life
Speaker 1: worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep
Speaker 1: themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their
Speaker 1: good wolf m Thanks for joining us. Our guest on
Speaker 1: this episode is Richard Schwartz. He began his career as
Speaker 1: a systematic family therapist and academic. He developed internal family
Speaker 1: systems or i f s in response to clients descriptions
Speaker 1: of various parts within themselves. He focused on the relationships
Speaker 1: among those parts and noticed that there were systematic patterns
Speaker 1: to the way they were organized across his clients, and
Speaker 1: then found that when the client's parts felt safe and
Speaker 1: were allowed to relax, the clients would experience spontaneously the
Speaker 1: qualities of confidence, openness, and compassion that he came to
Speaker 1: call the self. Richard is a featured speaker for national
Speaker 1: professional organizations and has published many books and over fifty
Speaker 1: articles about I f S. Hi Richard, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1: I am a excited to have you on. We're gonna
Speaker 1: be discussing your book No Bad Parts, healing trauma and
Speaker 1: restoring wholeness with the internal Family Systems model. But before
Speaker 1: we do that, we're going to get to the parable
Speaker 1: that I know you're excited to answer. In the parable,
Speaker 1: there's a grandparent talking with a grandchild and they say,
Speaker 1: in life, there are two wolves inside of us that
Speaker 1: are always at battle. One is a good wolf, represents
Speaker 1: things like kindness and bravery and love, and the other
Speaker 1: is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and
Speaker 1: hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops and thinks about
Speaker 1: it for a second and looks up at their grandparents
Speaker 1: as well, which one wins, and the grandparents says the
Speaker 1: one you feed. So I'd like to start off by
Speaker 1: asking you how that a parable applies to you in
Speaker 1: your work and in your life. Well, it sort of
Speaker 1: contradicts my work. My path and passion in the last
Speaker 1: four years has been to try to reverse that kind
Speaker 1: of thinking in our culture. So I'm not a big fan.
Speaker 1: So I think that will be clear to people here
Speaker 1: in a little while. Why so, I guess let's jump
Speaker 1: into it, and I'm going to assume that listeners don't
Speaker 1: know anything about internal family systems. Some uncertain do, but
Speaker 1: many don't. So broadly speaking, what is I f S Well,
Speaker 1: I developed it to be a form of psychotherapy, but
Speaker 1: it's kind of evolved into being more like a life
Speaker 1: practice and for some people of spiritual practice. Basically, what
Speaker 1: I found four years ago when I started on this
Speaker 1: journey is that things we think are bad, which would
Speaker 1: be the qualities that you mentioned about the was it
Speaker 1: a black wolf or something? No, no, no colors? Do
Speaker 1: our wolves? Bad wolf, bad wolf, greed, hatred, fear, all
Speaker 1: those things aren't what they see. They're not just negative emotions.
Speaker 1: They're actually eminations from parts of us that, because of
Speaker 1: traumas in our lives or bad parenting. We're forced out
Speaker 1: of their naturally valuable stays and forced into roles that
Speaker 1: they don't like, which would be the ones you just
Speaker 1: mentioned and others, and carry a lot of the extreme
Speaker 1: beliefs and emotions that came into your system during those
Speaker 1: traumas and drive the way these parts operate. So what
Speaker 1: I learned very early was, first of all, that we
Speaker 1: all have but I call parts, that it's the nature
Speaker 1: of the mind to be subdivided that way, and that
Speaker 1: they're all valuable, but that they get forced out of
Speaker 1: their naturally valuable states by traumas and attachment injuries, and
Speaker 1: they pick up these what I call burdens, extreme beliefs
Speaker 1: and emotions that drive them into actually being negative and
Speaker 1: actually can be damaging to you or two people around you.
Speaker 1: But that isn't who they are. And when you think
Speaker 1: that's who they are and you starve them as in
Speaker 1: the parable, they just get stronger and try harder to
Speaker 1: get your attention or take over your life. So I
Speaker 1: was working with eating disorders back in the day when
Speaker 1: I developed this, and that's what I was trying to do.
Speaker 1: I was trying to get my clients ignore the voice
Speaker 1: that told her to starve herself or the one that
Speaker 1: forced her the betage or fight with it, and they
Speaker 1: just got stronger that way. Just at some point decided,
Speaker 1: I've got to explore this and see what's going on.
Speaker 1: And that's when I started to learn that they're not
Speaker 1: what they see. So in essence, the idea is that
Speaker 1: we're not a single mind. We have multiple parts within us.
Speaker 1: And I've got some questions about how many parts and
Speaker 1: what types of parts, But we've got these different parts
Speaker 1: of us, and those parts I think you were describing
Speaker 1: as naturally sort of beneficial, but that they then take
Speaker 1: on I think the term you use in internal family
Speaker 1: systems would be burdens. They take on burdens based on traumas, challenges,
Speaker 1: injuries in the past, where a step into a role
Speaker 1: where they think they need to protect and thus then
Speaker 1: create behaviors and feelings and things that we might looking
Speaker 1: at it externally go, well, that's not good. That's not
Speaker 1: serving me, that's not helping me anymore. But it originates
Speaker 1: from these parts deep desire to protect us, exactly right.
Speaker 1: And in addition, they're frozen in time usually so they're
Speaker 1: stuck in the time of the trauma, and they think
Speaker 1: you're still five years old or whatever age you are,
Speaker 1: and that you're as vulnerable now as you were back then,
Speaker 1: and that you live in as dangerous a context as
Speaker 1: you did back then. So there's a lot of reasons
Speaker 1: why they do it, and you know, it's common sensical
Speaker 1: to think of them as just bad and to try
Speaker 1: and get rid of them. But yeah, that's a big mistake.
Speaker 1: Our culture is made for centuries now. According to internal
Speaker 1: family systems, we have parts, whether or not we've suffered injury, trauma,
Speaker 1: neglect or not. It's just that if we have, those
Speaker 1: parts have been forced into roles. They don't necessarily want
Speaker 1: any idea like does everybody have a similar number of
Speaker 1: parts to start with? Is it radically different? If so,
Speaker 1: any idea why it's different? I mean, do you have
Speaker 1: any underlying ideas there? I have no idea about any
Speaker 1: of that. Okay. I know that with the client, we're
Speaker 1: mainly working with the parts that are stuck to the problem,
Speaker 1: helping them transform. And the range in terms of numbers
Speaker 1: could be I would say from ten to okay, as
Speaker 1: we go through corsotherapy, sometimes more, But in terms of
Speaker 1: how many are there, I have no idea, and so
Speaker 1: the question then comes up, if there are all these parts,
Speaker 1: then who's me? When I talk about me? Who am
Speaker 1: I talking about? Yeah? I had that question too when
Speaker 1: I first ran into the phenomena by backgrounds of family therapists.
Speaker 1: So as I was fearing about all these parts, I
Speaker 1: started overlay my family therapy ideas onto them, and just
Speaker 1: to make one parallel. So family therapy is big insight
Speaker 1: was you can't take an acting out kid out of
Speaker 1: his family and tell him to cut it out. You
Speaker 1: have to understand the role he has been forced into
Speaker 1: by the dynamics of that family and change those dynamics
Speaker 1: and liberate him from that role so he doesn't have
Speaker 1: to protect himself for the family anymore. He'll naturally transform
Speaker 1: into who he really is. And that's what we're finding
Speaker 1: with these parts. It's the same process. So as I
Speaker 1: was getting that, which took quite a while, as a
Speaker 1: family therapist, I was trying to help change these internal relationships,
Speaker 1: and I was trying to get my client to actually
Speaker 1: listen to the parts rather than ignore or hate them
Speaker 1: or fight them. And so I was having these inner
Speaker 1: dialogues and I might have you Eric talk to your critic,
Speaker 1: your inner critic, and instead of yelling at it, or
Speaker 1: ating with it, or ignoring it, I'd try to get
Speaker 1: you to listen to it. And why it does this
Speaker 1: critical thing inside of you all the time? What's it
Speaker 1: afraid would happen if it didn't do that? And as
Speaker 1: I'm having those dialogues, maybe you eric suddenly get angry
Speaker 1: at the critic and the dialogue goes south. It reminded
Speaker 1: me of family sessions where maybe I'm having two family
Speaker 1: members talked to each other and trying to get them
Speaker 1: to listen, and suddenly one of them is angry at
Speaker 1: the other. And we were taught to look around the
Speaker 1: room and see if somebody isn't covertly signaling one that
Speaker 1: he disagrees with the other one too, And you've got
Speaker 1: these alliances happening, and we were taught to get that
Speaker 1: third person to step back and not interfere, and then
Speaker 1: things settle down between the other two. And I thought,
Speaker 1: maybe the same thing is happening in this inner system.
Speaker 1: Maybe as I'm having these two parts, or my client
Speaker 1: talked to the critic, a partner hates the critic has
Speaker 1: jumped in, and so I asked my clients, could you
Speaker 1: get that one to just relax an open space, step
Speaker 1: back in there. And my clients would say yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: and I'd say, okay, now, how do you feel towards
Speaker 1: the critic, And out of the blue, it would be
Speaker 1: this completely different answer, like, I'm just curious about why
Speaker 1: it calls me names. Seconds earlier they hated or they
Speaker 1: were terrified of it. You get that to separate, and
Speaker 1: it's like this other person popped out and knew how
Speaker 1: to relate to the critic in a healthy way. And
Speaker 1: when I would do the same process with other clients,
Speaker 1: it was like the same person popped out with the
Speaker 1: same curiosity, calm, confidence, compassion, even I'm sorry, I feel
Speaker 1: sorry for the critic clarity. Oh it suddenly it doesn't
Speaker 1: look so scary. I'm naming what we call the eight
Speaker 1: seas of what I call self leadership, because when I
Speaker 1: would ask clients what part of you is that, they'd say,
Speaker 1: that's not a part like these others. That's myself or
Speaker 1: that's me. So I came to call that the self
Speaker 1: and an answer to your original question, it turns out
Speaker 1: that that self isn't everybody can't be damaged and knows
Speaker 1: how to heal, and it's just beneath the surface of
Speaker 1: these parts such that when they open, space pops out.
Speaker 1: And that's who we really are. That essence is in everybody,
Speaker 1: and these parts are also who we are, except they're
Speaker 1: just part of us, and they add a lot of
Speaker 1: spice to our lives and a lot of discernment, and
Speaker 1: that could be very helpful. But who we really are
Speaker 1: is that self. So we have this self then, and
Speaker 1: you use a capital S for it. We've got this
Speaker 1: self that has these qualities that you are able to notice.
Speaker 1: You call them the eight sees curiosity, calm, confidence, compassion, creativity, clarity, courage,
Speaker 1: and connectedness. So our parts take on roles based on
Speaker 1: the things that happened to us. Right, they are conditioned, Right,
Speaker 1: they are conditioned by the experiences that we have. Is
Speaker 1: this self something that we would consider unconditioned? And so
Speaker 1: it's beyond personality. So is myself in essence the same
Speaker 1: as yourself? I think? So yeah, okay, I think that's right.
Speaker 1: So for me self has taken on and this took
Speaker 1: quite a long time too, more of a spiritual connotation,
Speaker 1: you know. I like the metaphor from quantum physics of
Speaker 1: photons being both a particle in a way, and like
Speaker 1: there's a way of state of self that when you meditate,
Speaker 1: you feel you kind of lose your separateness and you
Speaker 1: become oceanic. And then there's a drop of that ocean
Speaker 1: that's in each of us, and particleizes when it's in us,
Speaker 1: so that we do feel separate from each other, but
Speaker 1: it's really the same self. So in that way, yeah,
Speaker 1: I would say it's all the same. I want that place, okay.
Speaker 1: So that is uh, something closer to what in certain
Speaker 1: schools of Buddhism we might call Buddha nature. Certain ways
Speaker 1: of thinking of Christianity, they might call that the karmic Christ,
Speaker 1: or the inner Christ, inner Christ, or the soul. Yea
Speaker 1: call it coadtive book where we looked at it. Avirtually
Speaker 1: every religion and every spiritual tradition, they've all got a
Speaker 1: word for it, even though almost no psychotherapies know about it. Yep.
Speaker 1: So you know that's what I'm talking about. And so
Speaker 1: internal family systems then, as a approach, is where we're
Speaker 1: working with trying to understand what is going on with
Speaker 1: the parts, why they're the burdens that they are carrying,
Speaker 1: trying to get them to perhaps set those burdens down
Speaker 1: so that the self, this thing that has clarity and
Speaker 1: connectedness and the rest of the seas naturally sort of
Speaker 1: emerges and we spend more time living in the place
Speaker 1: of the self versus living sort of through the perspective
Speaker 1: of or in battle with the parts. That's part of it, okay,
Speaker 1: But it's also what I found in contrast in some
Speaker 1: ways to some of the spiritual traditions we mentioned, which
Speaker 1: where self is a kind of state that's fairly passive,
Speaker 1: witness state that you meditate to get to and and
Speaker 1: maybe try to lead more of your life. From when
Speaker 1: I would get my clients to access self in the
Speaker 1: way I described earlier, self became a kind of active
Speaker 1: inner leader that could not only interview the parts, but
Speaker 1: also often see them and go and hold them and
Speaker 1: comfort them, almost like a parent with a child, and
Speaker 1: actually sort of would take over the session and do
Speaker 1: what the part needed in a healing way, which just
Speaker 1: amazed me because I was working with clients who had terrible,
Speaker 1: terrible childhoods, and by most psychologies have no business having
Speaker 1: any of those qualities, But here it was, and they
Speaker 1: were actually healing themselves basically with me coming along for
Speaker 1: the ride. And so this concept of self isn't just
Speaker 1: a passive witness, but it's an active leader, both in
Speaker 1: the inner world and in the outer world. One of
Speaker 1: the goals is to help the parts trust that self
Speaker 1: can do that. Because when you were little and you
Speaker 1: were hurt and yourself couldn't protect you, your parts lost
Speaker 1: trust in its leadership and they thought, like a child
Speaker 1: in a family who becomes like a parent, they thought
Speaker 1: they had to take over and run things. So it's
Speaker 1: a big relief usually when they actually realized you're not
Speaker 1: still five years old, and you are a person who
Speaker 1: can handle them also handle the world. And you talk
Speaker 1: about different types of parts. I'm just trying to sketch
Speaker 1: the groundwork here for people before I start to go
Speaker 1: into maybe some some deeper questions. You talk about different
Speaker 1: types of parts. Maybe we could walk through those quickly.
Speaker 1: The first is exiles. Yeah, so just to clarify, these
Speaker 1: are not types of parts so much as the types
Speaker 1: of goals. These parts are forced into by what happens
Speaker 1: to them. Exiles. You know, we all are born with
Speaker 1: these what other systems call inner children. These very young, vulnerable,
Speaker 1: but also when they're not hurt, playful and creative and
Speaker 1: loving and open and ah yeah, on and on, all
Speaker 1: these wonderful qualities they have that we love to be with.
Speaker 1: But when they're hurt or terrified or shamed and made
Speaker 1: to feel worthless, they take on those burdens, They take
Speaker 1: on those beliefs about themselves, they take on the emotions
Speaker 1: from those experiences, and when they carry those burdens, they
Speaker 1: have the power to make us feel all those feelings
Speaker 1: that they still carry from those experiences, so they can
Speaker 1: overwhelm us and make it so we can't function and
Speaker 1: make us feel terrible. So we kind of naturally try
Speaker 1: to lock them away in inner basements or abysses and
Speaker 1: just move on from the trauma, thinking we're just moving
Speaker 1: away from the memories and the emotions of the trauma,
Speaker 1: not realizing we're locky way our most precious qualities simply
Speaker 1: because they got hurt. And so those we call exiles,
Speaker 1: we locked them away, and for them it's insult to injury.
Speaker 1: The injury was the trauma, and the insult is we
Speaker 1: abandoned them and left them in the past. And when
Speaker 1: you get a lot of exiles, then you feel more
Speaker 1: delicate and the world feels more dangerous because so many
Speaker 1: things could trigger them, and if they get triggered, they
Speaker 1: blast out of the basement and they overwhelm you and
Speaker 1: make you stay in bed for a week or whatever
Speaker 1: they do. And one other sorts of exiling is also
Speaker 1: if there are emotions in your family when you were
Speaker 1: getting raised that weren't acceptable and you had to luck
Speaker 1: away the parts that felt those things too. I think
Speaker 1: that was all of them. That's true for many of us. Yes,
Speaker 1: So when you have exiles, you've got to have protectors
Speaker 1: because so many things can trigger them, and so a
Speaker 1: lot of other parts are recruited out of their naturally
Speaker 1: valuable states to become these protectors, and they spend nervous
Speaker 1: amounts of energy trying to manage your life so that
Speaker 1: no one hurts you. Again, no one gets close enough
Speaker 1: to hurt you. Maybe no one rejects you because you
Speaker 1: don't look right, or everybody gives you accolades because you
Speaker 1: perform at such a high level. So these we call managers,
Speaker 1: they're just trying their best to manage your life, to
Speaker 1: please people and control the world. And they'll also control
Speaker 1: your body by making you a little bit dissociated from
Speaker 1: your feelings and keeping you in your head. And it's
Speaker 1: all an effort to contain these exiles and also keep
Speaker 1: them from being triggered. And then the world still triggers
Speaker 1: your exiles, so when that happens, it's a big emergency,
Speaker 1: and these flames of exile emotion encompassing you, so you
Speaker 1: need and other parts forced into this role of being
Speaker 1: what we call a firefighter. They're trying to fight the
Speaker 1: flames of exiled emotions, either by dousing it with some
Speaker 1: substance or getting you higher than the flames, or distracting
Speaker 1: you until they burn themselves out. So we all have
Speaker 1: these firefighter activities that immediately happened in an impulsive and
Speaker 1: I don't care about the consequences to your body, to
Speaker 1: your relationships. I've just got to get you away from that.
Speaker 1: That's another set of protectors. So the very simple Matt,
Speaker 1: we've got protectors, one group of which is called managers.
Speaker 1: The other is called firefighters, and they're both trying to
Speaker 1: contain and protect these vulnerable eggs. Parts of those. Let
Speaker 1: me relate some of this to my own life and
Speaker 1: my own story and see if it helps apply this
Speaker 1: in some ways. And I've I've got a couple of questions,
Speaker 1: So a little bit about me, you know, recovering alcoholic
Speaker 1: heroin addict. I've been in recovery fifteen years this time,
Speaker 1: and it was about ten years before that, so most
Speaker 1: of my adult life, and I certainly recognize the firefighter role. Right,
Speaker 1: That's what my addiction was, right, it was I can't
Speaker 1: handle how I feel, So let's douse the flames. Let's
Speaker 1: let's get rid of these feelings that we don't like.
Speaker 1: So lots of people are able to overcome their primary addiction,
Speaker 1: this and again depending on how the person recovered and
Speaker 1: the things that they did. But is it possible that
Speaker 1: in one case, what's happened is that that person's managers
Speaker 1: have gotten really skilled and the managers now have got
Speaker 1: things under control to the point that the exiles don't
Speaker 1: break loose. Thus we don't need the fire fire meeting
Speaker 1: in the same way. Yeah, that's what most addiction treatment
Speaker 1: is in this country, or I guess around the world.
Speaker 1: Even it's showing up the managers so that they not
Speaker 1: only contain the exiles, but they also lock up the firefighters.
Speaker 1: And that takes a lot of work. You know, it
Speaker 1: takes a lot of vigilance and a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: go to the meetings constantly and reinforce it. And that's good.
Speaker 1: I mean it's good in the sense that you're not
Speaker 1: you're not addicted, but you become addicted to the meetings,
Speaker 1: or you become addicted to whatever program is you're doing
Speaker 1: to try and show up your managers, and you become
Speaker 1: a kind of dry drunk in a way, and you're
Speaker 1: not that much fun because you're dominated by these managers.
Speaker 1: A better way, from my point of view, is to
Speaker 1: actually honor the addictive part for its attempts to try
Speaker 1: and save you from all that pain. It literally thinks
Speaker 1: it's say in your life every time it does that.
Speaker 1: And also go to the critic who's attacking you for
Speaker 1: not being able to control yourself and thinks you should
Speaker 1: have more willpower and so on, and get it to
Speaker 1: back off, get it off your back, and then get
Speaker 1: permission from those parts to go to the exiles that
Speaker 1: are driving the whole thing. And we have a process,
Speaker 1: it's like a five step process from which we can
Speaker 1: actually heal those parts and get them out of where
Speaker 1: they're stuck. In the past and help them unload what
Speaker 1: we call unburdened the feelings and beliefs they got back there,
Speaker 1: at which point it's like a curse has been lifted
Speaker 1: and they'll transform into who they naturally are. And then
Speaker 1: we can bring in the addictive part and the critic
Speaker 1: and see they don't have to spend all this time
Speaker 1: trying to deal with this pain. And then they shift
Speaker 1: into totally different roles themselves and they start to get
Speaker 1: along with each other. So it's a very different approach.
Speaker 1: It's like almost the opposite approach, sort of like what
Speaker 1: I was saying earlier about the two wolves. And it's
Speaker 1: a tough sell because the addictions community is very attached
Speaker 1: to the disease model and the sense that these addictive
Speaker 1: parts are just what they are. I got sober at
Speaker 1: twenty four from heroin addiction and very traditional twelve step approach,
Speaker 1: you know, Central Ohio, and not a lot of you know,
Speaker 1: not a lot of progressive thinking going on at that point,
Speaker 1: you know, And the basic idea was, you don't need
Speaker 1: to know why you're an alcoholic, you just are. Let's
Speaker 1: not talk about your parents, let's not talk about your childhood,
Speaker 1: Let's and and that approach worked. I got sober, but
Speaker 1: a few years into being and sober, I had some
Speaker 1: things happened. My marriage fell apart. I fell apart very
Speaker 1: promptly after that, and that led me into a type
Speaker 1: of therapy. At that time you already addressed one of
Speaker 1: the words for it. You know, my therapist was very
Speaker 1: influenced by a gentleman by the name of John Bradshaw,
Speaker 1: and we did a lot of you know, inner child work,
Speaker 1: which a lot of it feels similar to what I
Speaker 1: see happening in parts work. We didn't necessarily talk about
Speaker 1: the protectors in the same way. We kind of tried
Speaker 1: to get right to the exile if I had to,
Speaker 1: if I had to translate what I saw happening there
Speaker 1: and your approach, although I think what happened with me
Speaker 1: was indirectly. We were working with those protectors for a
Speaker 1: long time in order to get there. But at that
Speaker 1: point what it was is the work was really about
Speaker 1: letting that exile basically have the the emotions that it
Speaker 1: was unable to have when it was younger. Historically, I
Speaker 1: did a lot of this similar type wor a long
Speaker 1: time ago. And I have a question for you, though
Speaker 1: about some of this type of work, and you and
Speaker 1: I talked beforehand about, well, maybe we'll do some parts
Speaker 1: work here on the show. You'll you'll do some with me.
Speaker 1: And what typically happens for me and a lot of
Speaker 1: these areas is that I have precious few memories of
Speaker 1: being a child at all, Like it's a blank slate
Speaker 1: back there. And despite doing lots of inner child work
Speaker 1: and lots of different things, like I don't have memory
Speaker 1: of like three days ago. So it's not it doesn't
Speaker 1: appear to only be my childhood. It seems to be
Speaker 1: a broader system. How do you do parts work if
Speaker 1: you don't have memories? When we get to these exiles,
Speaker 1: these inner children start the healing process by what we
Speaker 1: call the witnessing stage, where I would have you ask
Speaker 1: this vulnerable part what it wants you to know about
Speaker 1: what happened in the past and where it's stuck in
Speaker 1: the past, and you might get memories, you might get images,
Speaker 1: but sometimes people don't. They just get the emotion or
Speaker 1: they just feel the sensations and their body just starts
Speaker 1: to move in strange ways. And many parts can feel
Speaker 1: fully witnessed without having you to know exactly the details
Speaker 1: of what happened. So it's really not a problem if
Speaker 1: you can't get the details. There are some parts that
Speaker 1: do want you to know the details, and the reason
Speaker 1: you can't get them is because other parts are afraid
Speaker 1: to let you know these things. So then we would
Speaker 1: work with the parts who are afraid for those memories
Speaker 1: to come, and just go over all their fears and
Speaker 1: try to get permission for you to see what happened.
Speaker 1: And because these parts, even though you consciously don't have
Speaker 1: memories much of the time, and this has been true
Speaker 1: for me, if you get permission, the memories will start
Speaker 1: to come too. And so you know, the other lenge
Speaker 1: that I found therapy wise in general inner child and
Speaker 1: a variety of different kinds, is I get asked a question.
Speaker 1: I looked at some of the exercises in your book,
Speaker 1: and I know some people that, like you know, Ralph
Speaker 1: Delarosa and I are are close, and I know he's
Speaker 1: a big proponent of your work, and so you know,
Speaker 1: I've been around this kind of work. Part of what
Speaker 1: happens is if if we were to say, like, okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk to this part in Eric, right, I have
Speaker 1: a very difficult time differentiating is my brain generating something
Speaker 1: that I know to be what I think that part
Speaker 1: should be actually thinking, saying or feeling because I kind
Speaker 1: of know the answers quote unquote in a way, right,
Speaker 1: I mean? Or is it really organically happening? It's very
Speaker 1: difficult to tell that apart. How do you help people
Speaker 1: differentiate that is this an authentic part speaking or is
Speaker 1: this a brain that knows what it thinks? The answer
Speaker 1: should be. So there are ways that you get tipped off,
Speaker 1: or I would get tipped off as your therapist that
Speaker 1: it was a part just trying to please me or
Speaker 1: trying to get through the session without getting dirty, you know,
Speaker 1: something like that, And I would just say, Eric, could
Speaker 1: you just see if there's some part of you that's
Speaker 1: just trying to do this, and then we would talk
Speaker 1: to you and see if we can get it to
Speaker 1: step out. So that's not a huge problem in this system.
Speaker 1: So you feel like over time by working with somebody
Speaker 1: that it starts to emerge when something real is happening
Speaker 1: versus something is not very much. Yeah, it's not hard
Speaker 1: to time. And then I think you still do parts
Speaker 1: work right, So this is an ongoing practice for you.
Speaker 1: Would that be a safe way to say it, you
Speaker 1: mean me personally? Yeah, totally, yes, Yeah, I mean I've
Speaker 1: done a lot of work over the years, and still
Speaker 1: my wife has an ability to tugger new parts that
Speaker 1: I need to heal. So it never ends, it seems,
Speaker 1: and you know, many many ways. I'm a lot better.
Speaker 1: I feel my power and I ever have, but there's
Speaker 1: still work to do. Yeah, you know. So a question
Speaker 1: that comes up for me a lot that I've been
Speaker 1: thinking about a lot recently is what is mental health
Speaker 1: or what is when you're done? Or what does it
Speaker 1: mean to be healed? Or what is good enough? Or
Speaker 1: what is how healthy? Do I think I'm going to get?
Speaker 1: You know, I think that's a question that comes up
Speaker 1: a lot in my mind. How do you think about
Speaker 1: that question? Yeah, I'm a big transformation guy, so you know,
Speaker 1: maybe in contrast to some schools of Buddhism, where the
Speaker 1: goal isn't too heal per se, it's really to become
Speaker 1: very acceptable what's in there and kind of live with it.
Speaker 1: But from a different place, this work actually helps you
Speaker 1: unload pain, unload terror, unload all the emotions or or
Speaker 1: the emotions you lead with. In terms of the second Wolf,
Speaker 1: it helps you unburden all that and when you do,
Speaker 1: not only do you not have to deal with those
Speaker 1: feelings that came into you they aren't native to you,
Speaker 1: that came into you from the experiences, but also these
Speaker 1: parts will transform into being very valuable allies. And whereas
Speaker 1: you didn't have access to much creativity before, you do
Speaker 1: this unburdening with this part, and now you have all
Speaker 1: kinds of creativity that helps you steer you in a
Speaker 1: different place in your life. So and there are four
Speaker 1: main goals of ifs. The first one is what we've
Speaker 1: been talking about, the liberation and transformation of these parts
Speaker 1: from the roles they've been stuck in so they can
Speaker 1: be who they're designed to be. And then the second
Speaker 1: we also talked about restoring trust of the parts in
Speaker 1: self as a leader. And then the third is bringing
Speaker 1: harmony to this inner system. So not only are the
Speaker 1: parts different, but they're getting to know each other and
Speaker 1: working together in new ways and feel more unitary because
Speaker 1: they're not battling all the time. And then the fourth
Speaker 1: goal is to be more self let in the outside
Speaker 1: world and bring more self to the world in that way.
Speaker 1: So that's for me what healing entails. When I look
Speaker 1: at your list of seas for the self, I look
Speaker 1: at them and I'm like, you know, I feel like
Speaker 1: I spend a lot of time around many of those sees.
Speaker 1: You know. I feel pretty calm, pretty confident, pretty curious.
Speaker 1: I think, naturally compassionate. I'm not trying to toot my
Speaker 1: own horn here excessively by any stretch. But what I
Speaker 1: don't feel, I think there's a see in here that is.
Speaker 1: The one that I would describe as doesn't feel as
Speaker 1: present is connectedness. And I've described it this way before.
Speaker 1: I've described it that I think I've done a lot
Speaker 1: of work over thirty years, in a lot of different
Speaker 1: ways and a lot of different schools, and I have
Speaker 1: taken away what I would call the vast majority of
Speaker 1: obvious suffering, right Like, I don't feel like I suffer
Speaker 1: a whole lot. And yet if I were to describe
Speaker 1: what I would say, it would be Okay, here's where
Speaker 1: I want to continue to grow. It is in feeling
Speaker 1: more connected or in not having what is from time
Speaker 1: to time sort of a low mood, flat effect. There's
Speaker 1: nothing going on there. It's like when I look at it,
Speaker 1: I'm like, well, nothing is wrong that I can tell
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, everything is actually pretty darn good
Speaker 1: and you know. And so then you read lots of
Speaker 1: different things that you hear or about happiness set points
Speaker 1: like well, a certain amount of happiness is just going
Speaker 1: to be, you know, genetic. And that's where I start
Speaker 1: to get into when do you go, okay, like just
Speaker 1: onwards with living and when do you continue deeper into
Speaker 1: a healing journey? Well, you mentioned earlier the possibility of
Speaker 1: working on that you want to spend some time, check
Speaker 1: again on that. I am willing to try it for sure.
Speaker 1: So I guess we would start with the part of
Speaker 1: you that makes you feel so separate and flat. Does
Speaker 1: that sound okay? M hum yep. So Eric, see if
Speaker 1: you can find that feeling in your body or around
Speaker 1: your body? Okay, got it? Where do you find it?
Speaker 1: It's kind of in the pit of my stomach. And
Speaker 1: as you notice that there, how do you feel toward it?
Speaker 1: In other words, do you like it or you hate it?
Speaker 1: Or you want you're afraid of it, you wish it
Speaker 1: would change, you wish to go away? How do you
Speaker 1: feel toward it? I certainly wouldn't say that there's a hate,
Speaker 1: but sure, I'd love to see a change. Okay, So
Speaker 1: we're gonna ask the part that wants it to change
Speaker 1: to give us a little space now and step back
Speaker 1: in there so we can just get to know it
Speaker 1: and and maybe you know, get to know why it's
Speaker 1: doing this better and just see if that one give
Speaker 1: us a little space I think so, then go ahead
Speaker 1: and focused in the pit of your stomach again and
Speaker 1: tell me how you feel toward it. Now. Well, here's
Speaker 1: the problem I described earlier. The answer that came to
Speaker 1: mind was curious. But I don't know if that's because
Speaker 1: I know that's what I'm aiming for. But let's just
Speaker 1: let's just go with it and see what happens, all right. Again,
Speaker 1: I haven't detected it, okay, Okay, ask the part who's
Speaker 1: so skeptical about this to just give us a space
Speaker 1: to give it a try, all right, and to not
Speaker 1: constantly comment and how you're making it up, okay, And
Speaker 1: then follow your curiosity and ask this one in the
Speaker 1: pit of your stomach what it wants you to know,
Speaker 1: and don't think of the answer, just wait and see
Speaker 1: what comes. And if nothing comes, that's okay, just kind
Speaker 1: of be patient. What does it want you to know
Speaker 1: about why it does this to you. It makes you
Speaker 1: feel this way. Three things are happening. One is the
Speaker 1: feeling in the pit of my stomach is slightly more
Speaker 1: intense good. Secondly is um an idea that it provides
Speaker 1: me an excuse to hide, And third is the the
Speaker 1: podcast host part of my brain going is this make
Speaker 1: good audio to for it to be quiet this long?
Speaker 1: But we're gonna ask that part to step aside hide,
Speaker 1: and we're gonna you can always add it it's right, okay, okay,
Speaker 1: So something about an excuse to hide? Did you say? Okay?
Speaker 1: So ask this part what it's afraid would happen if
Speaker 1: it didn't help you hide that way? I have to
Speaker 1: do things I don't want to do. You have to
Speaker 1: do things it doesn't want to do, or that it
Speaker 1: thinks you thinks aren't good for you. Um okay. The
Speaker 1: response I seem to get is I'm too tired. Okay,
Speaker 1: So it's ask if it's keeping you tired or it
Speaker 1: thinks you're too tired to do these things. I don't
Speaker 1: seem to be getting a clear answer on that question. Okay,
Speaker 1: try this one. Then, what are the things it's afraid
Speaker 1: you would do if it didn't do this job? Can
Speaker 1: you repeat the question over time? Yeah? Just again, I'm
Speaker 1: directed right to the pretty stomach. What's afraid would happen
Speaker 1: in terms of the things you would wind up having
Speaker 1: to do if it didn't do this? Inside tell people
Speaker 1: how I feel? Okay? So it's afraid that if you
Speaker 1: felt more, then you'd have to tell people about those feelings.
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yes? So it's keeping you flat so
Speaker 1: you don't feel so you don't take the risk of
Speaker 1: talking to people about your feelings. Just trying to get
Speaker 1: this right, Just ask what that's right? Yeah? I think so.
Speaker 1: It seems to be providing a little bit more information
Speaker 1: about the type of feeling. Perhaps, can you share that
Speaker 1: or you want to keep that private? That I'm angry
Speaker 1: with them and I don't like them, Okay, I wasn't
Speaker 1: afraid would happen if you did share that with somebody?
Speaker 1: Either they or I would get hurt? Okay, So it's
Speaker 1: really trying to protect you and other people from being hurt.
Speaker 1: Are the angry part of you? Sounds sorry? I'm checking that.
Speaker 1: Hang on, just check your Yeah, So how do you
Speaker 1: feel toward it now? Eric? As you learn how it's
Speaker 1: trying to protect you and keep you safe that way.
Speaker 1: I feel like that part is starting to take up
Speaker 1: more more bandwidth, the angry one or this one, I
Speaker 1: think the protector part the flat car. Yeah, and how
Speaker 1: do you feel toward him though? As you learn he
Speaker 1: is trying to protect you from being hurt? I feel
Speaker 1: compassionate towards him. And and now I might be using
Speaker 1: a term I know from reading the book blended, but
Speaker 1: because I also sort of feel like his arguments makes sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Like like I'm like, well, okay, I get your point.
Speaker 1: That's that's a good point. So I don't know if
Speaker 1: I'm blended with that part or but that's sort of
Speaker 1: what's coming up is like, hey, like we're waiting into
Speaker 1: what feels like slightly dangerous ground here, I understand. So, um,
Speaker 1: you're blended with a part that kind of agrees with
Speaker 1: him and relies on him, and it's also afraid of
Speaker 1: the anger. So uh, and that's fine. But for now,
Speaker 1: just extend some compassion and appreciation to the flat part
Speaker 1: and just see how it reacts to being understood and
Speaker 1: appreciate it. I don't know what the part feels. I
Speaker 1: just noticed my stomach sort of that that sensation sort
Speaker 1: of fade away a little bit, Yeah, relaxed. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's typical. And ask h and we you know, we
Speaker 1: won't do it. We don't have time. But if at
Speaker 1: another time you could go to that angry part and
Speaker 1: help it so it wasn't so angry? Would this guy
Speaker 1: have to work so hard to contain it? Just ask
Speaker 1: that question? Maybe it's fair. Yeah, And if it didn't
Speaker 1: have to work so hard at this job, let's suppose
Speaker 1: we could do that and it was freed up. What
Speaker 1: might it like to do instead inside of you play baseball? Cool?
Speaker 1: And ask if it would be willing to let you
Speaker 1: do that at some point or is it really still
Speaker 1: very very frightened of the angry part, whether it let
Speaker 1: me play baseball now, whether it would let you go
Speaker 1: to the angry one and he would yes? Okay, okay.
Speaker 1: And I don't know how long you've got, but does
Speaker 1: this feel like complete peace for them? Yeah? It's reminded
Speaker 1: me there's a batting cage right around the corner and
Speaker 1: I ought to go visit it. Yeah. I think this
Speaker 1: is like a like a good just thank the part,
Speaker 1: thank the part for sharing so much. And when you're ready,
Speaker 1: come on back. Okay, Yeah, so how do you feel now?
Speaker 1: I mean, that's a slightly awkward thing to do in
Speaker 1: front of, you know, thousands and thousands of people, but
Speaker 1: but okay, I feel okay. I felt something happening there.
Speaker 1: And I also sort of feel like, back to the
Speaker 1: point earlier, like I've done enough thinking about my psyche
Speaker 1: to kind of recognize that I think, I know that
Speaker 1: this this makeup makes intellectual sense to me, So I'm
Speaker 1: not sure that I wasn't kind of going where I
Speaker 1: think it would go. But the same time, there were
Speaker 1: shifts in internal experience that felt real, and that's part
Speaker 1: of the way we can judge. Yeah, my sense was
Speaker 1: that was quite real, and I would encourage you to
Speaker 1: try and find somebody can help you go to that
Speaker 1: anger so it's not such a threat and you don't
Speaker 1: have to organize so much of your life around not
Speaker 1: feeling yet. Yeah, it was interesting when we talked about managers,
Speaker 1: Like I said, I feel like my firefighters have kind
Speaker 1: of settled down. Although it's interesting that you talk about
Speaker 1: firefighters being very interested these are not your exact words,
Speaker 1: but very interested in finding enlightenment, right right, It's that
Speaker 1: it's that like, get me out of here, so here.
Speaker 1: I recognize that. But the thing about managers is they
Speaker 1: are parentified in her children. They're usually very tired and
Speaker 1: stressed out. And I'm not much stressed out most of
Speaker 1: the time, but tiredness is more of a thing, you know.
Speaker 1: And I bet if we had stayed in there and
Speaker 1: asked that flat guy if he was tired of having
Speaker 1: to contain all this, he would say, yeah, he's very tired. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I believe that when he asked to expand that kind
Speaker 1: of energy to contain it, then he'll make you tired.
Speaker 1: So let me ask a few more questions if that's okay,
Speaker 1: and then we'll chop up here in a minute. So
Speaker 1: I want to turn a little bit towards trailheads. Tell
Speaker 1: me what do you mean by the word trailhead. Trailhead
Speaker 1: is any thought pattern or emotion, or impulse or sensation that,
Speaker 1: if you were to focus on and stay with, would
Speaker 1: lead you to the part from which it's emanating. So
Speaker 1: it's like, if you're out hiking, then you find the
Speaker 1: head of a trail, and if you follow the trail,
Speaker 1: it leads you to something like a waterfall or something important.
Speaker 1: So that's all I mean by so basically, what we're
Speaker 1: saying is we're using our own experience of difficult thoughts, emotions, tension,
Speaker 1: things along those lines as a thing to say, Hey,
Speaker 1: something to look at here. Let's pause here, and let's
Speaker 1: go in here a little further. Let's find the part
Speaker 1: that that's coming from and get to know it and
Speaker 1: help it. I have this program called Spiritual Habits and
Speaker 1: talk about triggers, Like you know, we all have different
Speaker 1: triggers that remind us to do something, and that the
Speaker 1: most powerful kind of trigger is sort of an emotional
Speaker 1: based trigger. It's when you recognize an emotional state and
Speaker 1: that actually gets you to pause and do something versus
Speaker 1: just being lost in it. Let's talk about spirituality and
Speaker 1: and I f S. I'd like to explore this a
Speaker 1: little bit more because you said, I f S is
Speaker 1: morphed over time for being exclusively about psychotherapy to becoming
Speaker 1: a kind of spiritual practice. And I would love to
Speaker 1: know what that statement means to you, and what the
Speaker 1: word spiritual means to you, because I just mentioned I've
Speaker 1: got a program called Spiritual Habits, and I often am like,
Speaker 1: what should I call it? Spiritual habits. Is it philosophical habits?
Speaker 1: Is it psychological habits? Like these things all just there's
Speaker 1: such a blending and overlapping of them. What do you
Speaker 1: mean when you say that I f S is morphed
Speaker 1: you know, from psychology to more of a spiritual practice. Well,
Speaker 1: people do it as a daily practice often, and as
Speaker 1: they do it, there are aspects of IFS that help
Speaker 1: you work with your parts, but then there are others
Speaker 1: that help your parts relax. And as your parts relax
Speaker 1: and you feel more and more embodied in what I'm
Speaker 1: calling South, you feel like you're meditating. You feel like
Speaker 1: you're arriving at that place that people meditate to get to.
Speaker 1: And as you stay in that, you feel a lot
Speaker 1: of the things that people meditate for, which is you
Speaker 1: feel like you're much more than this contained body and
Speaker 1: that you're part of something much bigger, and there's a
Speaker 1: sense of well being and everything's okaynus. And so it
Speaker 1: becomes that kind of a spiritual practice where your sussing,
Speaker 1: from my point of view, more and more of the
Speaker 1: big Self what people call God, and you're bringing more
Speaker 1: of that in and that is very soothing to your
Speaker 1: parts to know that's who you are. You were talking
Speaker 1: earlier about how you don't feel that connected. You feel
Speaker 1: very separate even though you've done all this work, and
Speaker 1: that process of embodying the spacious sense of self feeling
Speaker 1: the bigger sound makes you feel very, very much more connected,
Speaker 1: not only to that but also to other people, into animals,
Speaker 1: and to the earth. So all of that becomes a
Speaker 1: spiritual practice. Yeah. Yeah, there's a couple of lines that
Speaker 1: you use that I thought I really liked, which is,
Speaker 1: I f S helps people become bodhisatvas of their psyche.
Speaker 1: So for listeners who aren't familiar with that term bodhisatva,
Speaker 1: it is a primarily Mahayana Buddhist term. I believe it's
Speaker 1: certainly emphasized heavily and zen practice the bodhisattva as someone
Speaker 1: who is basically trying to lead all beings to enlightenment.
Speaker 1: So I love that idea of you know, we're becoming
Speaker 1: a Bodhisatva of our inner parts. And you said, or
Speaker 1: through a Christian lens, I f S. People end up
Speaker 1: doing what in the inner world what Jesus did in
Speaker 1: the outer They go to the exiles and enemies, love
Speaker 1: and heal them and bring them home. Yeah. Yeah, and uh,
Speaker 1: just kind of getting those insights has been quite amazingly
Speaker 1: on this journey. Is I got more and more how
Speaker 1: it's all parallel. How what a lot of these spiritual
Speaker 1: leaders were saying is true in the under world as
Speaker 1: much as it is in the outer world. Yeah, well
Speaker 1: you you say that in the book multiple times. You
Speaker 1: say a theme of the book is, you know, exploring
Speaker 1: how it's all parallel. How we relate in the inner
Speaker 1: world will be how we relate in the outer world.
Speaker 1: And that experience feels so true to me. You know,
Speaker 1: I don't know which lead which what? Where is it?
Speaker 1: Learning to love the external world more which led me
Speaker 1: to love the internal world? Is that the internal world
Speaker 1: leads the external Like, like you said, there's sort of parallel.
Speaker 1: I think improvements in one for me anyway, has always
Speaker 1: led to improvements in the other. But it's hard to
Speaker 1: improve in the inner world if you think of these
Speaker 1: things in the traditional way we do, which is the
Speaker 1: other wolf? You know, I once I had an audience
Speaker 1: with the Dali Lama, and my big line was because
Speaker 1: he talks about similar he talks about their negative emotions,
Speaker 1: and there are positive emotions and you need to build
Speaker 1: these antidotes to the negative ones and focus on the
Speaker 1: positive ones all the time, very much the same as
Speaker 1: the wolf story. And I said, you know, it's ironic
Speaker 1: to me that you teach us to go with compassion
Speaker 1: to our outer enemies but not our inner enemies. And
Speaker 1: he didn't really have a good answer to that. My
Speaker 1: point of view, Yeah, well, I think it's an interesting
Speaker 1: question because I think about this often and what I
Speaker 1: see a lot of in spirituality, and I see it
Speaker 1: in various forms of psychotherapy, although not so much I
Speaker 1: f S. What I see is two basic approaches for
Speaker 1: working with things of difficulty. One is, I would say,
Speaker 1: you get in there and you mess with it and
Speaker 1: you try and change. So cognitive behavioral therapy. I'm having
Speaker 1: thoughts that are difficult, I go in, I examine those thoughts,
Speaker 1: I look at them, I look for truth, you know,
Speaker 1: I orient towards the positive. I get in there and
Speaker 1: do something with it. And the other is, more broadly speaking,
Speaker 1: what I'd say would be more of acceptance based therapies,
Speaker 1: which are you allow things to be as they are,
Speaker 1: and I f S is bringing a little of both
Speaker 1: of that together. Right, You're you're certainly allowing the parts
Speaker 1: to be there, the negative emotions to be there, and
Speaker 1: you're encouraging them to change and transform. And so the
Speaker 1: part of Buddhism that I've often heard that sounds very
Speaker 1: similar to me that would allow line with I f
Speaker 1: S is this idea of I'm not going to think
Speaker 1: of the right quote right now, but it's basically the
Speaker 1: jewels in the lotus, right, no mud no lotus right
Speaker 1: to use tick not on. I think he's the originator
Speaker 1: of that phrase. Yeah, of all the bodies leaders, Tikn
Speaker 1: his philosophy because the closest time yeah, yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: in terms of your anger used to take your anger
Speaker 1: and create it like a little baby. Yeah. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: as close as you can come. So within all of this, though,
Speaker 1: do you find a time or a place or a
Speaker 1: point where it is useful and there are times where
Speaker 1: it is useful to say orient your mind towards the positive? No, No,
Speaker 1: And that would be that you feel like any time
Speaker 1: there's any sort of negative thought or thinking going on,
Speaker 1: that it's coming from burdened part. Yeah, it's a it's
Speaker 1: a part that needs your attention. And if all you're
Speaker 1: doing is thinking about the positive you're going to ignore it.
Speaker 1: You know, there are times where say you're on a
Speaker 1: date and you just wanna have fun, and some part
Speaker 1: is reminding you that your dog died three years ago.
Speaker 1: You might want to say, Okay, I'll talk to you later.
Speaker 1: But I hate the power of positive thinking. I hate
Speaker 1: positive psychology. I had all of that. The doll a Llama,
Speaker 1: I don't hate him, but I hate his philosophy. That's
Speaker 1: that's the I'm leading, And we're leading this episode off
Speaker 1: with that quote. Chris makes you capture that, just morph it.
Speaker 1: So we got Richard say he hates the doll a Llama. Right,
Speaker 1: that'll help my career enormously. So, but just this whole
Speaker 1: attitude about if you just think, look on the bright
Speaker 1: side and think positively, your life's going to be good.
Speaker 1: It leads towards exiling. And I'm a big crusader against
Speaker 1: exiling anything. So yes, I mean, certainly there are times,
Speaker 1: well I'll say to these parts, look, don't harass me now,
Speaker 1: I'll talk to you later. But it's with a lot
Speaker 1: of kindness, like you would if a kid comes running
Speaker 1: in and you're trying to do something else, you know,
Speaker 1: let me be, but I'm not going to forget about you.
Speaker 1: Not bad for wanting attention, but now is not the time.
Speaker 1: That's right. My personal beliefs are there are times that
Speaker 1: we want to adjust where our attention is. You know,
Speaker 1: you always want to do it with kindness, and you
Speaker 1: don't want to do it in the extent that it
Speaker 1: becomes denial. The example I often use is like, if
Speaker 1: I walk into a hotel room, there's gonna be like
Speaker 1: three things I really love about the hotel room and
Speaker 1: a couple of things that aren't so good, and I
Speaker 1: feel like there's a benefit and going, you know what,
Speaker 1: I'm going to try and give the attention to the
Speaker 1: parts of what I like and let the parts that
Speaker 1: I don't like about it, you know, sort of go.
Speaker 1: It's is not denying anything, it's just saying, you know,
Speaker 1: where do I want to orient attention in this case?
Speaker 1: But I think that's something that's relatively surface. I think
Speaker 1: when we're talking about inner pain, at least to me,
Speaker 1: has always made sense to pay attention to it, like
Speaker 1: what's here? Why, what's going on? Yeah, to go with
Speaker 1: it with initially curiosity but ultimately with love and Yeah,
Speaker 1: but it isn't just the pain. I mean again, you've
Speaker 1: got the wolves of I forgot the three you started with,
Speaker 1: but agreed, I think and read hatred and anger or envy.
Speaker 1: Fear probably might have been in there. Anger. Yeah, all
Speaker 1: those things that many Buddhist traditions see as negative emotions.
Speaker 1: Those are just hurting parts, their parts that need your
Speaker 1: attention to love as well as much as these eggsiles.
Speaker 1: So the more you think of them as negative emotions,
Speaker 1: the less you're going to feed them, and the stronger
Speaker 1: they're gonna get. Yeah, well, I think that's a great
Speaker 1: place for us to end. Thank you so much for
Speaker 1: coming on the show. I really appreciate the chance to
Speaker 1: talk with you, to share I f s with others.
Speaker 1: Will have links in the show notes to your book,
Speaker 1: to your website where people can find you. And thanks
Speaker 1: for doing a little parts work with me. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: thanks for being a good sport and allowing that and
Speaker 1: for being so vulnerable with your audience. I'm sure that
Speaker 1: part of the reason you have a big audience is
Speaker 1: because you're very honest about your own experience. So it
Speaker 1: was a pleasure to be with you. Thank you so much.
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