Posted on 11th Spetember, 2023

When working with clients and in my own ongoing inner work there are lots of models to help facilitate insight and growth.

I view these as maps that can help us navigate our experience. They are not the territory itself.

My north star here is Roberto Assagioli, a contemporary of Jung and Freud. He created a persuasive and useful model of the human experience, the psychology of Psychosynthesis. And influenced by his study of yoga and vipassana meditation he wisely advised of his own model, "This is not the Truth".

So we can better find and worse models.  None are the absolute truth. Though discernment can be exercised in choosing the best maps available, both in our pursuit of inner-understanding as well as building effective understanding of the world around us.

A Buddhist Lama once told my friend, whom he mentored, when he was getting overly literal about Buddhist prescriptions: "Buddhism is bullshit". Meaning that no concepts are ultimate truth. Even that concept itself. This astonished my friend at the time of course! It is a remarkable restraint of the human desire to grasp at certainty and I find in this deep humility Buddhism may come closer to truth than religions which claim unique ownership of truth. 

A beautiful model I'm trainedin and use with clients and myself on a daily basis is Internal Family Systems (IFS), a model of Parts Work.

It's a model of the mind that is remarkably similar to that I've experienced on mind-revealing plant medicines like Ayahuasca or in meditation practice.

We see that we are multiple (Neuro-scientists call this the 'modular mind'), with the only aspect which is unchanging being the Self (essentially our Buddha nature, or deepest consciousness). I think of these modules as tendencies, or proclivities made up of different aspects or energies producing a parrticular effect - like in music, a group of notes make a particular chord and thus mood.

This Self is compassionate, calm, centred, confident and curious. Everyone has this, even those with the most profound traumas, according to creator of IFS, Dr Richard Schwartz, a family therapist and Harvard professor.

We all have different parts - perhaps, an Inner Critic, a good boy or girl, a rebel, an addict, an escapist, a social butterfly, a recluse, a part that thrives on or even craves attention.

These parts are natural and form their identities in response to life events.

We have wounded parts (Schwartz calls these 'exiles') from unhealed traumas (big T and little t) and protective parts which stop us and others getting too close to the exiles and activating feelings which we didn't have the capacity to process when the parts were formed.

For example, a child whose need for emotional closeness and mirroring wasn't met might develop a deep sense of lack of belonging and create a story that they are not being met because they are wrong in some way. This can simply be too much to process for a little person. They don't have the wisdom to know not to take their parents capacity to respond to them personally. Children might literally face death if they are unloved. So a child who experiences a lack of love may experience terror at a deep layer of their somatic geology.

Unable to hold or process these feelings a protective part might form at the time of trauma, to prevent overwhelm. This part might seek stimulation to avoid feeling pain (an addict part) or tell themselves that people cannot be trusted and so avoid intimacy and the pain of abandonment.

A key insight from IFS is that the most profound intention of even parts which might wreak havoc in our lives is positive and comes from a healthy ego desire to love and protect. Even if the behaviour and beliefs are based on an outdated reality and are destructive. Hence Schwartz' book on IFS aimed at the ordinary reader is called 'No Bad Parts' (I highly recommend this book to anyone seeking a kinder relationship to themselves).

The impact of the parts' behaviour and attitudes may very well be 'bad'. Their intention is good though. And when met with a loving therapist or even more powerfully with the compassionate presence of our Self, these parts can be persuaded to step back and allow the healing work that needs to be done.

On an early Ayahuasca ceremony I met a part of myself who was hypervigilant and highly analytical and often kept me stuck in my head. I saw how he had formed to protect me from the unpredictable energies and scarcity of emotional resources in my early life. Underneath was an exiled part who felt existential anxiety. In a scene like a military parade I saluted 'Captain Analysis' for his service and recognized his abilities, before letting him know he could take off his army uniform, relax and we would work out a new role for him, which eventually became a meditative tool in becoming hyper-aware (sometimes!) of when I lost focus, presence or loving awareness. It's a work in progress of course and he's quick to grab his uniform if he feels threatened but over time this has become rarer and rarer and I've come to use his sensitivity in productive ways - which were probably his original purpose, since we are naturally modular and have parts whether we experience trauma or not. Trauma shapes them but they are natural and inherent.

Years later, I came across depth psychologist Bill Plotkin's concept of the Loyal Soldier - based on the true story of a Japanese soldier discovered on a Pacific island in the 70s who had to be persuaded that World War II was over and acknowledged for his service before he would step down from his duty - which describes a very similar process and demonstates for me what a great and universal map this is.

IFS is a relational model. Which I'd suggest is how we heal emotional wounds the best. Since these most likely originate in relation to others.

IFS isn't in my opinion 'the Truth' either. The Truth for me is always just out of reach and is a trajectory, or guiding star rather than a reachable destination. But it's a fantastic model or map that allows us to develop loving kindness to the multiple parts within.

Schwartz describes the process of IFS as becoming a Boddhisattva to all the 'people' we encounter within.

We humans anthropomorphize everything. We talk to dogs as if they are human. Or trees. Or a slow boiling kettle. To God(dess). To everything, whatever level of consciousness. It is how we sense-make and relate. So for me these 'parts' do not really exist, though their behaviour does. Do chords exist without an instrument to sound them? Only as concepts. What is a C Major without the animating press of piano key?

So our parts are concepts we can relate to. Symbolic representation of experience and memories created in the moment of remembering. And, as if in a theatre of the psyche, we can have great healing and improve self-knowledge and thus sovereignty by, meeting these psycho-somatic energies with love and thus find deeper harmony.

When we find more harmony and peace inside we likely find our outer experience mirrors this, as we project less inner-conflict on the world.

I highly recommend the tool of IFS and parts work and I'd be happy to discuss this further should you be curious about relating more lovingly with your parts.