These Parts Ain't Loyal - An IFS & Somatic Journey (Part 4)

Ever had your own rug pulled from under yourself... while being the one who pulled it? Yeah, me neither.

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I’ve been intensely seeking my entire life without realising my mind was the overlord of my reality. Everything was always about what’s next rather than what’s now, and I couldn’t see past the deathgrip of its rigidity.

I came from a position of placing little value on feelings, emotion or intuition, and placing all value on data, cold hard facts and science.

Lately though, that’s all changed.

This is Part 4 in a series I call Mind Is The Enemy.

• Part 1: A Bug In The Deployed Code (My Backstory)

• Part 2: An Encounter with Consciousness Itself

• Part 3: Expand Love & Freedom

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Writing letters, meditating, going to talk-therapy and following spiritual practices are all great ways to become lighter and unburden from stored energies.

But in order to do that, first we must become aware of the underlying unconscious trauma, pattern or program that’s running in the background and modulating our experience - and that’s not always easy.

Have you ever said “a part of me wants to do <insert thing here>, but another part of me wants to <insert exact opposite thought, feeling or action here>”?

We intuitively say these type of sentences, but we don’t tend to think about what’s transpiring on a deeper, more holistic level.

What if these each of these parts had a name, story, background, purpose and an agenda? Almost as if they were a totally separate and self-sufficient individual.

And what if these parts have been around for so long that you’ve (innocently) mistaken your true identity for them?

Even better, what if these parts could act as a direct pipeline to your deepest and innermost fears, wounds and unconscious patterns?

I don’t know about you, but that sounds more exciting than any example my brain is coming up with right now. Which is nothing.

That’s where Internal Family Systems (IFS) and Somatic therapy comes in.

IFS & Somatic Therapy 101

I’ve been working within the IFS and Somatic frameworks for a while now, but the things I talk about here didn’t integrate fully until an intense week of psychoanalysis and therapy in February just passed.

I won’t be diving deep into into these modalities, rather I’ll provide a basic overview for purposes of supporting my writing here.

If you’d like to delve deeper into these topics, I’ll be leaving some excellent resources by therapists, professionals and other Substackers at the bottom of this post.

IFS is a psycho-spiritual therapeutic modality that combines systems thinking, psychology and spirituality with the idea that the mind is made up of discrete sub-personalities each of which have their own role to play in the safety and protection during our lives. These parts develop in response to life experiences and hurtful or traumatic events usually in early childhood where the child doesn’t have the developmental capability to adequately protect themselves, and they stick around into adulthood because they don’t know their protection is no longer required (i.e. its an unconscious pattern, program or samskara).

IFS prescribes a classification system for recognising and working with parts:

• Core Self: Who we essentially are at birth before parts, patterns and programs. This is the ‘higher Self’ or ‘Wise One’ that sits at the core of our being, truth and soul, and possesses the capability of self-healing, inner wisdom and pure consciousness.

• Exiles: Parts that represent the deeply stored psychological wounds, our inner child. Before we get hurt they are creative, playful, explorative, innocent and loving, but they are also very sensitive and carry painful feelings so they get ‘exiled’ and pushed down into the system, which is where the protectors (managers & firefighters) come in to save (or sometimes not save) the day.

• Managers: Parts that are here to keep us safe by ensuring our day-to-day operations are running as smoothly as possible. They tend to be logical, future-focused and strategic and attempt to circumvent any and all activation of the exiles. They’re typically tired and stressed as the very nature of their role prevents us from seeing what we probably should be seeing.

• Firefighters: Similar to the managers in the sense that their role is to protect, but they’re much more reactive in nature and come out during times of danger (real or perceived). These parts are here to put out the emotional fires and they typically do this via immediate comfort, relief, distraction or dissociation.

Image by Dr. Laura L. Walsh. Source.

Almost everyone has protector parts and they’re in operation for most of the day when we’re out and about living life in the modern world. We actually operate from these parts from most (if not all) of our waking life, and in this way Self becomes obstructed and distorted.

Conceptually I prefer to think about the Self as pure consciousness who forgets or temporarily loses itself when it identifies with objects of experience (a part being an object of experience in this case), but when it comes to working with our innermost delicate parts this inquisitive, curious and compassionate approach to going inward is extremely beneficial to healing and even progress on the spiritual path - an area I feel the spirituality space in general often innocently overlooks, or outwardly diminishes.

The goal of IFS is to achieve balance and harmony within the Self so individuals can experience what is at their essential core - love, creativity, wisdom and courage. This is both an integration of previously fragmented parts of consciousness (re-parenting through the pain of the exiles), and an ‘un-blending’ of Self from its identification with the protector parts.

Because a lot of trauma is unconscious and IFS strictly on its own is more cerebral, Somatic body work acts as a pipeline to the unconscious, and they complement one another almost effortlessly.

Somatic work approaches healing via the body instead of avenues that exclusively rely on the conscious psyche and is based on the idea that the body represents and holds blocked energy and emotion created by traumatic events as experienced (and promptly filed away) by the conscious psyche. In other words, the body is essentially a goldmine!

I love writing about these topics, but I’m not a therapist. While IFS and Somatic work can be done by yourself, if you are experiencing psychological difficulty and/or trauma it’s recommended that you do this under the supervision of an accredited professional for safety.

The Rug Pull

After an activating (substitute word for triggering) coaching session with Danny, who I first wrote about in Part 3, I was reflecting and feeling bad about the thought that I’d both overshared too much about my inner world and shown way too much appreciation and gratitude for his help.

So the next day I woke up with the determination to call myself out once and for all! I wrote this huge essay called “the ultimate story I tell myself” where I reflected on my natural desire to tell the truth at all levels as an unconscious form of receiving acceptance, love and validation.

After I wrote it, I sat there reflecting on my the note I wrote and the feelings I was having - something felt off because I felt even worse than I did before. I text my therapist and told her how I hate all these parts and that I keep having visions of me standing there with a minigun blasting them all away from the core Self.

But IFS says that we can and should have love and compassion for our parts, and the words ‘anger’ or ‘minigun’ were never mentioned… so I start thinking to myself - could this just be another part talking?

I drop into the body (somatic work) to see what I can find out. I ask “who’s there?”. The response I get back with an immediate tightening and sinking feeling in the chest - “the devil”. Turns out that was a joke and this was a part of me I’ve known very well since childhood and that kept me safe - cheeky, crafty and fiery - and will do anything to protect me.

This thing completely deceived me, but I wasn’t angry anymore because I could see exactly how it protected me. In fact, I kinda liked this part. Ahh, so this is what IFS means when it talks about love and compassion for your parts.

I started taking notes on this part I called “The Cheeky Devil” so I could know exactly what I was dealing with, and then I re-read my essay so I could validate if it was written by this part because it seemed to be in control of me. It wasn’t written by this part. So who the hell was it, then? Enter The Critic. I beat myself up the entire 4,000 word essay, it was total bullshit - true Self doesn’t play those petty games.

At this point, my mind was blown. I had felt like I’d just had the rug pulled from under me… only… it was myself pulling my own rug that I’d placed under myself, from under myself? 🤨 I’d been screwed over by others before but screwing myself over while being consciously aware to watch the experience? This was quite a spectacle. That’s when I realised my mind was the enemy, and I couldn’t trust anything it told me.

Of course I didn’t literally mean that though, it was just a rather fitting phrase to use for what had just transpired. In actuality I was just as excited as Nintendo 64 kid at christmas over this discovery, so I did what any sane adult with a full-time job and loads of other probably more important responsibilities would do…

I spent every free moment I had over the next week intensively mapping out as many of my parts as I could using my favourite note-taking software so I could visualise linkages, clusters and patterns!

Parts Mapping

I’m a visual person and I like seeing how things hang together so the first thing I did was draw a diagram representing my system of parts:

• In the middle, I drew a circle representing The Wise One (core/true Self).

• Around that I drew another circle representing the pain of the exiles or inner child.

• On the perimeter of that circle, I placed each protector part as I discovered them.

• Each one of these elements linked off to a note to describe that particular part, and in my personal version I had a bunch of descriptor elements which broke down each one of the protectors you see here.

I have not touched this diagram since, but my process to get this party started was:

1. Think about and write down any situations or interactions in my life where I was activated, upset, angry, or anything that elicited a strong emotion that knocked me out from a place of calm and peace.

2. If the part is clear or immediately obvious I simply start taking notes on it (4. below), otherwise I drop into the body to see what I can find - I either go in with a particular activating moment in mind (to see if it could be reproduced in the body), or I’d go in freestyle and scan the body for any sensations.

3. If something does come up in the body, I have an explorative and curious conversation with the sensation in my body to see if I can access that unconscious information which might reveal the part to me:

   1. Who’s here? Who is protecting me?

   2. Can you step back for just one moment?

   3. What are you afraid might happen?

4. Once I had a decent enough idea of who I was working with, I run through a few questions to help me take notes:

   1. What is this part? Does it have a name?

   2. How and why does it protect me?

   3. How long has this part been around and where did it come from (origins)?

   4. When does this part become activated and why (triggers)?

   5. What behavioural characteristics does this part have, and how does it relate to other parts?

At the time, I just pieced this process together for myself from both my own exploration and working with my therapist, but there’s a process for getting to know and healing protector parts - The 6Fs of IFS.

To help uncover the exiles or child parts, I completed a questionnaire that provides insight into our ‘Early Maladaptive Schemas’ - a concept from Schema Therapy which essentially offer clues into core underlying patterns and beliefs that lay in the unconscious since childhood.

Becoming a detective for these parts, unblending from them and unburdening the pain of your child parts is not a quick process - I still progressively work on these notes as life unfolds around me!

Here’s what it’s looking like today:

Exiles (Red), Firefighters (Yellow), Managers (Blue). Although parts can act across multiple roles, so it’s tough to statically caregorise!

The Therapy Session That Changed Everything

Later that week I had an intensive therapy session with my amazing therapist Haidee. As if the week wasn’t intense enough already!

I brought my laptop in to show her all this work (I get the feeling therapists find it amusing when people take inner work to this level 😂) and there came a point where I just felt so done looking at the computer and pummelling myself in psychoanalysis - so we decided to drop into the body.

I’m immediately faced with a visual of a much older, dishevelled and tired version of me, while a healthy and strong version of me approaches. This version of me wouldn’t look me in the eye no matter what - I assumed it was avoiding seeing the true Self.

As Haidee is coaching me through the experience, I’m relaying what’s going on in my body. While I’m talking to this part I remember his energy feeling very icky, rigid and low - this guy was just so exhausted and overworked from protecting me since I was a kid.

Letting this part that know he didn’t need to do that anymore was empowering. I could feel the warmth and power of the Self as it approached this part and fully embraced him in pure loving presence, and that’s when he finally looked me in the eyes and saw who I truly was - no longer a little child.

Before I came out of the body, we asked what he’d like to do with all his extra time off, to which he replied “all I want to do is read books and lay by the river”. That sounded… so nice… I’d actually never done that before.

This was the most powerful somatic experience I’ve had to date. The part of my mind which is usually in constant incessant and anxious chatter just went completely quiet, and I felt more relaxed and grounded than ever before.

At the time, I thought I was just talking to one part specifically - the critic, but the experience was so powerful it blew the life paradigm I was living from into pieces, and replaced it with a new one. It seemed more profound than just speaking to one part, so I had to ask my therapist what actually happened:

Rocco what you did was what we call ‘disidentify’ with your ‘system’ of parts and connect with yourself for the first time ever instead of being in a part. This has now allowed you to essentially view your system or internal organisation working rather than being trapped in it. The freedom of this and the insight is beyond freedom!

Wow. Connecting with the power of the true Self, The Wise One, for the first time ever, without a part blocking, distorting or obstructing it’s light? Insane, scary, sad and empowering… all at once.

The next and final part is where I’ll be describing the more mystical and spiritual parts of this journey, which have no doubt changed the course of my life forever. It’s the reason why I’m still here, writing.

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This post is dedicated to my amazing therapist Haidee Lease. Haidee, without your unconditional, warm and loving presence during our work together, I don’t know where I’d be today - certainly not writing on the internet & exploring my curiosity just like I used to when I was a kid! I’m so grateful and appreciative for our time together, and I’m honoured to do this work alongside you, your light and your love. Thank you.

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This piece’s companion track

Further Exploration on IFS & Somatic Therapy

• No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model (Book)

• A Practitioner's Guide to Somatic IFS: Awareness, Breath, Resonance, Movement and Touch in Practice (Book)

• The Integral Guide
  by
  Levi
  (On Substack)

• The Body Is A Trailhead by Lissa Rankin, MD

• IFS Collective
  (On Substack)

• An explainer from my partner Sophia on Somatic Work (Shameless Plug)

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If you enjoy my work, like 💜, restack 🔄 or share it with someone you think might enjoy or appreciate it - I’d be immensely grateful.

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