No Bad Parts w/ Richard Schwartz

This week Scott is joined by therapist and creator of Internal Family Systems (IFS), Richard Schwartz. Dr. Schwartz offers his latest thoughts on IFS, personal burdens, and the 8 C's of Self-Energy. He even helps Scott make contact with a part of himself that's been buried since childhood summer camp during an impromptu therapy session. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
We were working with kids from the street a lot
of the time, and they would, you know, they would say,
if I don't have this protective part of me around
all the time on the street, I'd be killed. And
I would say, I totally get that, and we'd respect that,
and I'm glad that part's been keeping you safe. But
see if you'd be willing to relax and hear enough

(00:20):
that we could heal what it's protecting, and then it
could drop its weapons at the door. And sometimes that
was literal.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Today, it's a great pleasure to have Richard Schwartz on
the podcast. Doctor Schwartz is a family therapist, academic author,
and creator of the Internal family Systems branch of therapy.
We cover a lot of ground in this episode, focusing
on the mean tenets of the internal family Systems approach
and the notion that there are no bad parts. Along

(00:49):
the way. We cover a lot of his unique terminology,
such as the idea of personal burdens, his notion of
the self with a capital S, and our quote protect
and quote exile parts. We also discussed the eight seeds
of self energy and self leadership. Also, things get really
wild at the end when we do an impromptu therapy session.

(01:11):
Richard Schwartz helped me make contact with a part of
myself that has been buried ever since summer camp when
I was about ten years old. If that intrigues you,
you'll have to listen to the end of this episode.
In general, I like doctor Schwartz's approach. I think he
has amassed a good amount of scientific support for many
aspects of his theory, and I know for a fact

(01:32):
that his approach to therapy has helped many many people
change their relationship to themselves and relate differently to the
various parts of themselves. So, without further ado, I bring
you the legendary doctor Richard Schwartz. Dick. It is so
good to have you on the Psychology Podcast. Thank you
for being here today.

Speaker 1 (01:52):
Thanks for inviting me. Looking forward to it.

Speaker 2 (01:54):
Oh, thank you me too. I've been wanting to talk
to you for a long time. First of all, I
want to thank you for giving me a shout out
in your book on the Maslow quote about creative self actualizers.
So thank you. I appreciate that.

Speaker 1 (02:06):
Thanks for the quote. It is very helpful.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
You're very welcome. So I want to step back a
moment and understand a little bit about what your career
was before you created internal family systems, thinking, what was
your career like before that? Were you a clinical psychologist,
You're a therapist.

Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yeah, so I have a PhD in Maritland family therapy.
So I was very steeped in the early days, pretty
early days of the family therapy movement, which was a
big sort of attempt to be a corrective to the
excesses of the psycho analytic world. So there was this

(02:48):
big polarization back then and I was a part of that.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
And you know, it's such an almost not obvious insight,
but no one's ever made that insight before that you
linked that internally, there seemed to be patterns coming up
again and again the way that people were treating the
different parts themselves. That was akin to the way that
family members treat each other in the external world. I mean,
what an incredible insight. You know, when you think of it,

(03:17):
it's like, oh, that seems kind of obvious, but it
really wasn't. So can you can you talk me through
how this insight arose?

Speaker 1 (03:26):
The history of it is again, I was one of
those obnoxious family therapists that thought you didn't have to
do anything but reorganize external systems. And then I tried
to prove that by doing an outcome study with a
group of kids who had Bolivia with my colleague Mary
Joe Barrett, and found that we could reorganize the families

(03:49):
just the way the books said to and these kids
kept binging and purging, didn't realize they'd been cured, so
out of frustration, I began asking why they kept doing it,
and they started talking this at the time strange language
of parts to me. But I think the big event
I had several advantages. One is I had assiduously avoided

(04:12):
studying any intro psychic kind of models, so I had
to come to the phenomena without any presumptions, and I
had to you know, be in what the Buddhists called
beginner's mind. I really had to learn from my clients.
So for that reason, it's pretty close to the phenomena.
And that I did have this big systems background from

(04:33):
family therapy, so rather than just trying to get to
know one part at a time, or you know, focus
on them individually, I was very interested in how they
operated as a system, in much the same way we'd
been studying how families have patterns and sequences and getting

(04:55):
caught in vicious circles, and yeah, I just noticed. I
was in interested in how does this part relate to
this one? And when this when this part takes over,
and then what happens? And again it's just using the
same questions that we were using with families. When your
father does this, what do you? What do you do?

(05:15):
And then when you do this, what does your sister do?
And so I'm just trying to get a picture in
my head of how this works as a system. As
you said, I'm the first one to really do that,
and I think it was because of my background and
in my naivete.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
I mean, was there like a stroke of insight moment
here like do you have like a story the founding
of acid? You know, like you're like I was walking
and then and then it dawned on me that I've.

Speaker 1 (05:47):
Got a lot of those, but I'd say the the
biggest early one, because as my clients were talking about
these parts, I made the mistake that most of the
fields still makes, which is to assume that they were
what they seemed like. So the critic was some kind
of internalized parental voice, and the binge was some kind

(06:10):
of out of control impulse, and when you think of
them that way, you're ways of helping your client relate
to them are limited. You want them to fight with
a critic and stand up for themselves, and you want
them to try to control the binge. So I was
getting clients to do that, and they were getting worse.
But I was like that man in a hole with

(06:30):
a shovel. I didn't know to do anything but dig
deeper and stand up stronger and control more. Until the
first client that I was aware of had an extensive
sex abuse history and cut herself on her wrists, and
so it was driving me crazy. She was doing this

(06:50):
on my watch. So one session, I decided she wasn't
going to leave my office until the part had agreed
not to do it to her. And by then I
learned learned how to interact with these parts. And there's
something called the Gestalt empty chair technique, where you have
your clients sit in a chair opposite their chair and

(07:11):
be the part and I could talk to it directly,
and I have my client talked to it. And so
I was berating this part for a couple hours one
session and having my client do that, and it finally said, Okay,
I won't cut her this week, and I opened the
door of the next session. She has a big gash
down the side of her face. And that was a

(07:33):
turning point in the history of this model, because I
collapsed internally and I spontaneously just said, I give up.
I can't beat you at this, and the part said,
I don't really want to beat you. And it was
that moment where I shifted from the collapse, or the
coercive place to start with in the collapse, and I

(07:57):
just became curious and said, why do you do this
to her? And the part told me the secret history
of how when she was being abused, it needed to
get her out of her body and control the rage
that would get her more abuse, and this was an
effective way to do that, the cutting, And so I

(08:17):
shifted again. Now I have a kind of appreciation for
the heroic role it played in her life, and I
can convey that to her. And the part broke into
tears because everyone hated it and was trying to get
rid of it, and finally somebody was listening to it,
and so that started the process the big insight that
maybe these parts aren't what they see, which now forty

(08:42):
years later, turns out to be true that I wrote
a book called No Bad Parts, because there are no
bad parts, even the ones that have done hated things.
If you get curious and ask them, they'll share their
secret history of how they had to protect and so on.
So that's the kind of that's one of the radical

(09:04):
aspects of iveass that all kinds of diagnoses and syndromes
and symptoms and uh, you know, perpetrator behavior. If if
you go to it with curiosity, you'll learn that these
parts aren't what they say. They don't like doing what

(09:25):
they're doing, but they think they need to. And they're
also stuck in the past. So if we were working
with one of your parts and I said, okay, I
want you to ask it how old it thinks you are,
you often will get a single digit. They think you're
they're still five years old, and they've got to protect

(09:45):
you the way they did back then. So all that
was it's just say revelatory. You know. I was really
hard to believe it first, and once I started to
believe it, because I started trying the same proce with
other clients, it was really hard to convince anybody else
that this was true.

Speaker 2 (10:05):
Yeah, really revelatory. You know, I've spent some time really
trying to wrap my head around the notion that there
are no bad parts. It didn't it didn't come obviously
to me that that is true, and I have been
a little skeptical of that. But what I've come to
understand and correct me if I'm wrong, is that there's

(10:25):
an extra lay of nuance there that I when I
dig deeper into your writings, that I think I can
I can rally around. It's that you're you're not you know,
you're not condoning all the actions of the parts. What
you're I know, let me get through it, because I
think I figured it out. I think I figured out.
I think I get you finally good. But I've been
trying to wrestle this. What what I'm understanding from you

(10:49):
is that is that there are bad roles, but there
there are no bad parts. So there are bad roles,
there are bad Yeah, you wouldn't write You wouldn't write
the book. No, bads, you wouldn't write that book.

Speaker 1 (11:01):
I would not write that book.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
Yeah. So that's my understanding of your work. It is
really nuanced, and it really doesn't give a free pass.
You know, it's like the old you know, it's like
the thing you have to accept yourself before you can change.
And then people always rebuttal and say, well why when
I accept things that I don't like about myself? And
then you have to explain to people acceptance is not

(11:25):
the same thing as liking, you know, accepting, but you
have to really make contact with the reality.

Speaker 1 (11:32):
But to that, I would add the line that if
you start to accept this part of you that is
so hard to accept, it will let you know that
it's not what you think it is, and in that
process it can actually transform. So it isn't like we
go to all these bad roles and we just say

(11:54):
I can accept you because you're not you know, I
know you're not really bad, and let them vary. That way.
We go to these parts to help them transform, and
you can only do that if you really in your
bones know they're not what they say that they actually,
once released from these roles, become valuable inner citizens.

Speaker 2 (12:16):
Well, this is so relevant when I think about the
proper way or the healthiest way of dealing with bullies
school boys, or dealing with kids that act out. You know,
the worst thing to do is to continually shame them,
shame them for their behavior. But you actually can find
that when you really do work with it. And I
don't know if you've done this kind of therapy with

(12:40):
aggressive boy at young boys.

Speaker 1 (12:43):
US. That's the population I started out with, makes sense,
besides the believed kids. I was working at a place
called the Institute for Givenal Research on the West Side
of Chicago, and so we were working with kids from
the street a lot of the time, and they would,
you know, they would say, if I don't have this

(13:04):
protective part of me around all the time on the street,
I'd be killed. And I would say, I totally get that,
and we respect that, and I'm glad that part's been
keeping you safe. But see if I'd be willing to
relax and hear enough that we could heal what it's protecting,
and then it can you know, it could drop its

(13:24):
weapons at the door and sometimes that was literal, and
then it could pick him up on the way out.
So yeah, I've worked a lot with that population.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
Wonderful. I want to start making some link just here
to some of airs of mutual interest. One. You know,
I'm a big fan of Abraham Masil and I've tried
to I have a new hierarchy of needs and wrote
a whole book and kind of an ode to Maslow
and extending that work. And he was really obsessed in

(13:56):
the last couple of years of his life with the
bite Zatva path to enlightenment. And I love this quote
from you in your book. You say IFS helps people
become batisapas of their psyches. And that's really I think
Masil would have appreciated that. I do. I certainly appreciate it.
Can you explain a little bit about that path to

(14:17):
enlightenment and how that is related to your psyche?

Speaker 1 (14:22):
Yeah? So then to do that, I have to introduce
this other what I would consider to be the biggest
discovery of IFS, which is as I was doing that work,
like with the cutting part, or with these critics, or
even you know, I you know, I didn't conclude that
there were no bad parts until I decided to work

(14:44):
in a treatment center for sex offenders and wound up
working with the parts of perpetrators and would hear their stories.
So anyway, I was doing that work of trying to
get people to listen to rather than fight with these parts,
rather than hate them or fear them. So I might
be working with you with your critic, let's say, and

(15:06):
I would say, okay, Scott, see what it wants you
to know about itself, and wait, don't think of the answer,
wait and see what comes from that place in your
body where it seems to be located. And you would
start doing that, and you might start a decent conversation
with it, and then suddenly you're furious with the critic.
And it reminded me of family sessions where I'm working

(15:28):
with two family members to try and get them to
listen to each other, and suddenly one of them is
furious with the other, and you look around the room
and you see that a third party is queuing the
one who's angry now that he disagrees with the other
one too, and there's a kind of alliance that gets formed.

(15:48):
And in family therapy, we learned to get that third
member out of the line of vision of the one
and create a better boundary, and when you did that,
things would settle down and they'd have a decent conversation.
So I began thinking, maybe the same thing's happening in
this inner system. Maybe, as I'm having you talk to

(16:09):
your critic. A party who hates the critic has jumped
in and is interfering. So I would say to you, Scott,
can you find the one who hates the critic and
could you get it to just give us a little
space in there?

Speaker 2 (16:21):
The critic of the critic, the critic.

Speaker 1 (16:24):
Of the critic. Yeah, a part that's polarized with the
critic that's trying to stand up for you. Just ask
it to chill for a little while so we can
get to know this critic and in doing that we
might be able to help it trust that it doesn't
have to yell at you all day. And most people
will say, okay, that one did relax back, and I'd say, now,

(16:48):
how do you feel to where the critic and it
would be some version of I'm just curious about why
it calls me names and said from a place of
calm and confidence and even compare and in that state,
when I had you in that state, the critic would
drop its guard and would tell its secret history of
how it got into their role, and then we could

(17:10):
actually help it transform. And when I would try that
same process of getting these parts to open space, it's
other parts and other people, it was like the same
person would pop out with those same Seaward qualities of calm, confidence, curiosity, compassion,
plus four more which include creativity, clarity, courage, and connectedness.

(17:36):
And when I would ask people what part of you
is that, because that's great, let's keep that there, they'd say,
that's not a part like these others. That's me or
that's myself. So I came to call that thus self
with a capitalists yeah. And now forty years later, thousands
of people using this all over the world, we can

(17:58):
safely say that that sell is in everybody, can't be damaged,
knows how to heal, and is just beneath the surface
of these parts such that when they open space, it
pops out spontaneously. And that's the big discovery of IFAs,
and that, in going back to your original question, that

(18:20):
turns out is not a discovery many other psychotherapies have made,
but is a discovery that most every spiritual tradition has
made that that's who, that's in our essence, and have
different names for it, including Buddha nature. And somebody who
has is in Buddha nature becomes a budhsata. So you

(18:45):
when you're self led, you just naturally show compassion to
all these former enemies, both internally and externally.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
Let me ask you a question. Are you familiar with
the book Your Symphony of Selves by James Fataman and
Jordan Kruber. No, okay, they're they're friends of mine, and
uh it's a terrific book that's very much in alignment
with with your your thinking, but from a maybe a
different perspective. I don't I don't think they mentioned your
therapy in there. But the idea is that we are

(19:16):
a symphony of selves.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
Let me right, let me shut that down.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
Yeah, you can listen to my podcast chat with Jim
Fataman later, but it's called Your Symphony of Selves. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (19:28):
Are they aware of my work?

Speaker 2 (19:30):
Well, I want to make an intro. You know, I'm
not sure. I'm not sure. My question is this, you know,
because your work also links to the work in evolutionary
psychology on sub selves. You know, there's a like Douglas
Kenrick and colleagues wrote you know, the Rational Animal, arguing
that all of these different selves are very rational from

(19:52):
an evolutionary point of view. So my question is why
call it capital s self? Why not? You know, an
alternative path you could have taken is to just say,
these are all different cells. This is the authentic self.
You could have called it something like put something a
modifier between before self, and then we have all these

(20:13):
other selves. Why is this the self in your model?
There are other ways you could have gone with this.
I'm just curious.

Speaker 1 (20:22):
Well, the reason I call them parts is because that's
what clients called them. You know, it didn't give me
that far in academia. It's not a great technical term.
It actually sounds like an automobile, you know, like one
part or another.

Speaker 2 (20:38):
But it's intuitive, but it'sive.

Speaker 1 (20:39):
It's intuitive. It's the most useful term every Like, if
I'm talking to you and I say, oh, so this
part of you does this, you don't say what are
you talking about? But if I were to say, oh,
if one of your sub personalities do this, or one
of your ego states did this, you'd say what are
you talking about? So so I just tried my best

(21:00):
to keep the language close to the client and self
without saying real self or true self or course self
is the most user friendly word.

Speaker 2 (21:13):
So yeah, there's so much to think think through here.
You know, I wrote I've been sort of synthesizing the
scientific literature on what it feels like to be authentic.
You know, you you asking questionnaires, what does it feel
like it? And I and I call the authenticity bias.
It seems that what people call their real self tend

(21:36):
to be the aspects of themselves that exactly conform to
the adjectives you used. So you're in all that research literature,
people will if you ask them, you know, to to
you give them a list of forty five different adjectives
and you say, place at one to five scale the
extent to which each one represents your real self. They

(21:57):
will tend to put a five to all the kind
of things you see. They eight things, curiosity, calm, confidence, competiton,
so basically all the positive things. Now, So the way
I've seen it, and I've interpreted that, maybe you're nicer
than me. But the way I've interpreted it is that
people have an authenticity bias is what I've called it.
They are biased to only include the most moral and

(22:20):
good aspects about themselves as their real self. And I've
argued there's no such thing as the real self, they're
just different selves, and that the root to growth is
to actually take responsibility for your whole self, and not
only and not disavow parts of yourself as not the
real me. So maybe there actually is greater confluence there

(22:40):
than I'm making it out to me, you know, to
your model. But that's the way I've been thinking about it.
So the thing that seems to be very in wine
in our approaches is certainly not having shame for the
other selves. But I would still include them as part
of the They are really you, right, I mean, they
still are parts of you, and owning that seems to
be the part. Yeah, yeah, there you go.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
Yeah, And that's that's the important distinction though, because it's
one thing to say I'm a manipulative asshole, and it's
another thing to say I have a part that does
this manipulative thing.

Speaker 2 (23:18):
But why isn't curiosity a part of you as well?
I guess is what I'm asking? Or you know, confidence
is a part of you. Compassion is a part of you.
You could you could make the scientific claim at all
either of those things are independent parts. Like the confident
part isn't always the courage part. It doesn't always come together,
does it? Do you see what I'm saying?

Speaker 1 (23:36):
I do. So what I'm saying is this self I'm
talking about that you can access the way I describe,
which is actually what people meditate to get to. In
many spiritual traditions. Its described the same way. It has
those qualities, but there are parts who also have those qualities.

(23:58):
Now to know which it takes some inquiry. So if
you want to know there's a part that's super curious
about things, is that me? Or is that a part?
I would just have you focus on that curiosity and ask,
and then you could get an answer about it. Yeah.

(24:19):
But going back to your original question, which is why
aren't all of them you? They are parts of you,
but they aren't your essence. And so I agree with
the people filling out those forms because you're asking who's
your essence and they're giving you that. And that's been

(24:42):
my research, That's what I've found. And the fact that
they're saying that's who I really am doesn't mean that
they don't have negative, hurtful parts. And the goal of
life has actually one goal is to help transform these
parts and then bring them back home so they're actually

(25:03):
even more you and they don't stand out and you
feel much more integrated that way. And let me let me,
let me go back to your concern about people not
taking responsibility, because I do remember that was part of
your question.

Speaker 2 (25:18):
Right, Yeah, there was like fifty parts to my question.

Speaker 1 (25:23):
Because I've struggled with that, and it turns out that
it's a much easier to take responsibility for a part
of you that did something heinous, because it's much easier
to admit it. Yes, and it's also much easier to
change that than if it's all of you, or if

(25:44):
it's you, because all you got to do is find
the part that did it, and there are you know
about five ors maybe seven steps to healing apart and
help it unload the burdens of care. Is it made
to do that?

Speaker 2 (26:02):
I guess I have a really existential question because and
I might just be overthinking it, but isn't it an
implicat logical implication of what you're saying is that within everyone,
we all have the same essence and it's the positive
aspects of our being. It seems to me that's the
logical implication we're saying. And I'm not fully there yet

(26:26):
because there's let me.

Speaker 1 (26:27):
Positive pause me, because isn't the only positive aspects of us?
All these parts have positive aspects?

Speaker 2 (26:36):
Okay?

Speaker 1 (26:37):
So The big paradigm shift is the idea that we're
born with these parts, either manifest or dormant, and that
as you go through your life, they come when the
when their time is right, they kind of pop up,
and they all have valuable qualities and talents for us.

(26:57):
They they're they're necessary for our thriving in our life,
and then they're forced out of their naturally valuable states
by the traumas we suffer, into roles that can be
quite damaging, and they pick up from these experiences, the
traumatic experiences what we call burdens, these extreme beliefs and
emotions that enter them and attach to them like a

(27:21):
virus and drive the way they operate. So they're all
good to begin with, and then they get infected and
they get frozen in time and these traumas, and then
they become damaging and what you might call bad. But
releasing them from all that, they'll transform back into their
naturally value of states. So I'm not saying that self

(27:43):
is the only positive aspect at all. I'm saying that, yes,
that's the only part of you that maybe hasn't been
tainted or forced out of its extremes and knows how
to heal you.

Speaker 2 (27:58):
Yeah, there really is a un under it's nuanced, and
there is an underlying spirituality component to this because there's
kind of like a you know, a wholeness unity versus
fragmented sort of theme going on here, which you see
in a lot of spiritual things. You actually say here
at one point. The big conclusion here is that parts

(28:20):
are not what they have been commonly thought to be.
They're not cognitive adaptations or sinful impulses. I would argue
they could they can be cognitive adaptations from an evolutionary
point of view, but that's that's an aside. Instead, parts
are sacred spiritual beings and they deserve to be treated
as such. I really would like to double click on that.

(28:41):
It's it's a it's a fascinating claim. You know, what
what does that mean scientifically for a part to be
sacred spiritual being that automatically deserves to be treated as such?
Like what is that? Can you unpack more what that means?
I mean, I wrote the book Transcends, so I think
I know what you mean, and I think I love it.
But I would like for our audience if you could
kind of just explain in like, like what technically does

(29:05):
that mean because it's poetically sounds good, but what does
that mean technically, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
It sort of means, you know, it's it's a reflection
of my journey because when I started out, I thought
of them as little bundles of various cognitions and emotions.
But they weren't beings. They weren't you know, full people
or anything inner people. And then over time, as I

(29:33):
worked with more and more, I got a sense that, oh,
these are not just little collections of thoughts and emotion,
but these are these actually have personalities, and they have
a kind of essence to themselves, each of them, and
they actually you know, there was a point where I

(29:58):
didn't know the limits of what you could do with ifs,
and so I recruited the toughest clients I could find,
and some of whom back then were called multiple personalities
or clients now would be called DEID clients. And so
I wound up with those clients. You can't access much

(30:20):
self in the beginning, so you wind up as a
therapist working with their parts directly, talking to them directly.
Sometimes we're like ten sessions in a row. I'd just
been working with one of the parts and this I'm
bringing to you. I don't talk about it all the time,
but I know you love this kind of intellectual idea challenge.

(30:42):
So as I'm talking to one of their parts, it
starts talking about its own parts, and it has it
self that can work with its parts. And so I
kind of got that it's all little fractals, you know,
it's all little microcosms, that each part has self, and

(31:03):
each part has parts, and wow, who knows how far down?
What is it? Turtles all the way down or something
like that, Who knows how far it goes?

Speaker 2 (31:13):
So each one of us is not our own snowflake.
Each one of us has an infinite number of snowflakes
within our snowflake.

Speaker 1 (31:20):
I don't know if it's I don't know if it's infinite.
There's a lot of them. Yeah yeah, wow. So the
point I'm making with all of that, or where do
we start with that?

Speaker 2 (31:30):
Yeah? Well this quote parts are sacred spiritual being.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
Oh yeah yeah. So the more I got that, they're
like seriously like little inner people or inner beings. Some
of them don't look like people, you know. They when
people see them, they describe them as an animal or
something like that. But but they're sacred in the sense
that for me, what I'm calling self, and again this

(31:56):
is a big lead for me. I came into this
work from a very scientific background. My father was a
big and a chronology researcher. I have three brothers who
became medical researchers. So I came in very atheistic and materialistic,

(32:18):
and you know, just thought that way, and then through
working with these systems, became more and more you know,
maybe this is like what the Buddhists talk about, Maybe
this is like what the Hindus talking about. Maybe this
is like so it became more and more interested in
all that, and lo and behold the metaphor I like

(32:40):
best when I'm talking about self comes from quantum physics.
That photons are both a particle in a wave. So
for me, what I call self is a particleized version
of what might be called the big self, or the
the nondual or the wave state. And when it enters

(33:06):
us and particleizes, it has boundaries and it knows how
to operate in this plane. But if through psychedelics or
some other meditation, you were to leave and enter that
big non dual, you would feel the lack of boundaries
and the connectedness to everything.

Speaker 2 (33:24):
You sound like lock Kelly.

Speaker 1 (33:28):
Lock Locks and ifs therapists.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
You guys have worked together, right, Oh yeah sure? Yeah, yeah, No,
I mean or I should say he sounds like you,
is what I should say. But yeah, yeah, but yeah,
I love I love the non duality approach. Yeah, I know,
it's wonderful.

Speaker 1 (33:44):
So the point I'm making is when I learned that
parts have that in them as well, then they became
sacred in her beings.

Speaker 2 (33:53):
Also, yeah, look, there's a real there's a real compassion
at the base. I mean, it's like you're bringing yourself
to this approach. You're not. You're not bringing some three
year old part to help people. So so I want
to really acknowledge that there is this kind of thread

(34:15):
that runs around such a such an immense compassion and
a loving kindness approach, a self compassion approach. I see
a lot of Kristin Nef's kind of work relevant to
how you treat these different parts of yourself.

Speaker 1 (34:32):
Yeah, I'm going to spend some time with her next
week at a conference.

Speaker 2 (34:35):
Tell her I said, Hi, Hello, so you meet some
discoveries about parts, and I just want to just listen
to these discoveries, even the most destructive parts have protective intentions.
Can you unpac a little bit what you mean by that?

Speaker 1 (34:51):
Well, if you want to go back to the sex offenders,
for example, so I would work with one of those
perpetu have them focus on the part that did the offending,
which they were very loath to do. They hated that
part and were terrified of it. But I would finally

(35:11):
convince them to do it and ask where it got
these impulses in the past, and they would see scenes
of themselves as children, they're mainly men as boys being
abused by their fathers, and it wasn't always sex abuse,

(35:32):
but being abused in some form, And the part in
showing that was trying to show that when they were
being abused by this their perpetrator, the part looked around
the room and said, who has power in this room?
It's this guy doing this to me. I'm going to

(35:52):
take into his energy to protect my system from him.
And so that part gets stuck with the desire to
hurt vulnerability that it got from its perpetrator, and then
it teems up with a sexual part to throw a
coup and take over and do the offending. So When

(36:16):
I got that, that's when I started to really believe
there are no bad parts. They're all just stuck with
these burdens that didn't aren't natural to them, that came
into their system from trauma. Or there's also what we
call legacy burdens that come down through the generations that

(36:36):
aren't related to personal traumas of your lifetime. They're related
to things that maybe happened a century ago in your
family lineage, or in your ethnic group, or largest floating around,
heating around in.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Our culture at like intergenerational Traumah. Yeah, very compassionate approach.
I mean, some people you must get over and over again.
What about Zerio Collers? You you must? You must? That
must be your the default go to response to when

(37:11):
you say that.

Speaker 1 (37:15):
I haven't worked with a lot of serial killers, so
I couldn't say for sure, but I would strongly suspect
that they they're perpetrating parts had of stories like the
other perpetrators. And so this has big implications for how
do we treat offenders, you know, how how do we
I mean, I'm like you, I don't want them to

(37:37):
not take responsibility and and accountability, and I don't want
them to have the ability to continue to offend. So
I'm not against uh, you know, locking people up. But
while they're locked up and they're they're parts. And this

(37:57):
is why so many of them kill themselves once you
them up, because that particular protector was protecting them from
the suicidal part. But while they're you know, they're safely contained.
Let's help them with these parts. Let's not shame them
and punish them, because that'll just perpetrate it all, I mean,

(38:20):
perpetuate it all.

Speaker 2 (38:22):
Yeah. You know, I made a statement once that everyone
deserves loving kindness and that if we increase loving kindness
for everyone in the world, there would be increase of
the total you know, goodness in the world overall. And people,
some people really are resistant to that. Some people can't
wrap their head around that notion that why would I

(38:45):
show loving kindness to a cruel, mean person? And then
I say, well, yeah, well, look that person's not well,
so if I give them loving kindness to be more well,
the world will be more well. Right, But some people
really have trouble with that, you know, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (39:01):
Which I understand. I mean, before I did all this,
I would have agreed with those people. But once you
do this inner work, and then you see how it's
all parallel in the outside world. You see the futility
of the punishment approach, and how you know, just to

(39:22):
be current, how the more violence Israel perpetrates on on
the Palestinians, the more that's just going to perpetrate it
and perpetuate.

Speaker 2 (39:35):
It all, and so vice versa and vice versa.

Speaker 1 (39:39):
Yeah, no question about it. And you know, I agree
that Israel has a right to defend itself. But as
you're finding, the world is watching how horribly they're treating
Palestinian civilians, and that will all come back to bite them,

(40:00):
and so those solutions just don't work in the inner
world or the outer orle.

Speaker 2 (40:05):
You just opened up that canon. I'm going to exert
self control. Another discovery that you made is that parts
are often frozen in past traumas when their extreme roles
were needed. I think you kind of just touched on
that a little bit, you know already when you were
talking about your clients. I do want to ask you
a question of because I know as you do bring
in politics sometimes in your book. You did, but let

(40:28):
me do double click on that for a second, because
I want to just just I noticed that, like in
your book, you had no problem stating you're not a
Trump fan. You had no problem stating, you know, you
bring up anti racism, which is it's like a very
left phrase. Do you do you just see it as
like you don't care if you alienate the audience, that

(40:50):
that that isn't in agreement with that political view. Like
I think it's kind of brave in a way, and
and some could say foolish too, but I'm not going
to say I think brave to do that. But because
I try not to do that in my work, I
try to keep it, you know, up here. But you
seem to have no problem doing that in your book.
So let me just ask you about that, like have

(41:11):
you thought that through and why did you decide that
you're okay with with bringing some of your own politics
into it.

Speaker 1 (41:18):
Yeah, well that was my policy was like yours for
a long time, because I didn't want to alienate audiences.
And I think a couple of things happened. What is
I'm I'm old now. I turned seventy four this year,
and so I care, I don't care as much about

(41:39):
all that, and I feel like there's more urgency to
change some things in the world now and and the
more self, let I become what what happens to people
as the access more self is you know there's that

(41:59):
sea where Claire. So they see injustice a lot more
than they did. They're not sublime to it that they
they see the imbalances that are causing a lot of problems.
And then they also have the C word courage, so
they can act or speak about it to try and

(42:20):
get it to change. And then they have confidence and
so on. And so self is kind of a social activist,
both in the inner world and the outer world. And
I you know, these days, I'm working with a lot
of the social activistic leaders trying to help them do
their activism from self, and they're finding they have much

(42:43):
more success when they don't do it from their their
righteous parts or you know, those kinds of parts. And
so this work is designed to bring more self to
the world, which will, if we can succeed, actually start

(43:03):
to change a lot of these things that are out
of line. And so I'd say in the last ten years,
I've been less afraid to be outspoken about a lot
of that.

Speaker 2 (43:17):
Yeah, I did. I didn't expect to go down this
alleyway of topic, but it led me here and I
am so curious, and so I'm bringing myself of curiosity
into this discussion because you do would I would push
back on one tiny thing, you know, or maybe it's
a big thing. But a lot of social activism can

(43:38):
become self righteous. So I wouldn't make a queer cut
case between social activism and self righteousness. Do you ever
work with because I think there's toxic activism. I think
there's narcissistic and so it seems like this parts work
you do can be very very important for social activists
as well to make sure that they're really bringing there.

(44:00):
I would say their best you would just say self,
but I would see their best self into their activism.

Speaker 1 (44:05):
That's that's exactly what I'm trying to do. And like
I said, I'm working with a number of them, and
there are other groups that are basing their activism around
I f S and they're there's just this increasing awareness
that the place from which you do at your activism

(44:27):
will either make things a lot worse or will make
it better, and that these burden parts that drive people
to become activists often are become even more of a problem.
Like you're saying, so you've got helping them all do
a lot of healing and learning to trust that they're
more effective if they lead from this place of sound.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
You call it self leadership, right, that's the phrase. Yeah yeah,
and self energy yeah yeah, awesome. And then the third
thing you discovered when they trust, well, I mean you
discovered many many things, more than three, but out of
this list of three here, when they trust it's safe
to step out of their roles, they are highly valuable

(45:10):
to the system. So you're saying that there might be
some ask some parts of ourself that on the surface
look even evil, but they're not evil, and that when
we can assign them a different role, we may actually
find what we once called evil, we might actually find
it valuable to the whole system. Is that what you're saying.

Speaker 1 (45:32):
Sort of? I'm not saying that the same behavior would
be valuable, right, saying that they totally change. So let's
go back to your critic. One question you could ask
it would be ask this critic, if we could heal
what it's protecting inside of you, so it was liberated
from this role, what might it like to do instead

(45:55):
inside of you? And you'd be amazed that the answers.
Many of the critics now want to do the opposite.
They want to be your cheerleader, or they want to
help you discern what's good and bad for you, but
they don't want to criticize you by anyways. They hate
that role. So that's the point. They all want to transform.

(46:19):
They just don't think it's safe into their naturally valuable roles.

Speaker 2 (46:23):
Well, you have this classification between exiles, managers and firefighters.
I'm trying to understand that when we talk about protectors,
is that is that the is that part of the
exiles part, you know, the exiles, any of them can
be our protectors that we're saying the exiles now, no, Okay,

(46:44):
explain it to me.

Speaker 1 (46:48):
So we all come out of our families or our
social systems, or while we're in those those those families,
there are parts that are acceptable in parts of us
that our families aren't like. And also when we get traumatized,

(47:11):
there are parts of us that get hurt more than
others by the traumas. Those tend to be the parts
that before they were hurt were playful, loving, open inner
children who are also very creative and playful. Like I said,
but once something bad happens to you. They're the parts

(47:33):
that are the most sensitive, so they get hurt the
most by the bad thing, and so they then become
burdened with beliefs like I'm worthless, or they carry all
this terror from what happened, or they carry emotional pain.
And once that happens, then you don't want anything to

(47:54):
do with them, and everybody around you tells you just
move on, don't look back, can't change what happened, And
in doing that, you wind up exiling these precious inner
children simply because they got hurt, not realizing you're not
just moving away from the memories of it or the

(48:16):
emotions of it, not realizing you're locking away your juice.
And so once you have a lot of these exiled parts,
you feel more delicate and the world seems a lot
more dangerous because so many things could trigger them. And
because of that, other parts are forced out of their

(48:39):
naturally valuable states to become protectors. And there are some
of them who are trying to protect the exiles from
being triggered again by managing your life in such a
way that everything is smooth and you don't get too
close to anybody, So they can't hurt you again, or

(49:00):
or you perform at a high level so you get
accolades to counter the worthlessness, or you look really good
so that you're not rejected. So this is what's called
the ego or the defenses, and a lot of psychotherapies.
But there are these little what in family therapy we
called parentified children. They're young too, but they're taking on

(49:23):
all this responsibility to protect you, and they're trying to
preempt anything that would trigger the exiles and keep them
all contained and keep you away from them. On an
ongoing basis, world has a way of breaking through those
defenses and triggering your exiles. When that happens, it's a
big emergency because it's like these flames of emotion are

(49:45):
bursting out, threatening to overwhelm you again and make it
so you can't function. So there's another set of parts
who immediately go into action to deal with this emergency.
And in contrast to the managers who are careful and
I want to please people and control you, these firefighters

(50:06):
we call them take you out of control. Are very
impulsive and they don't care about the collateral damage to
your body or your relationships. They just need to get
you higher than those flames of emotion right away, or
distract you until they burn themselves out. And so so

(50:28):
there are the big distinction is between axiles and protectors,
and then within the protector rubric there are managers in firefights.

Speaker 2 (50:37):
Oh that's what I needed. I need that systematizing. Thank you,
you're speaking my autistic language. Thank you, thank you. That's
exactly what I needed because I've been trying. I was
trying to map that all out and getting confused. What
was a subset of what? Okay, thank you, thank you? Wonderful.
I want to kind of end our interview today with
some laws of inner physics. What a cool phrase, by

(50:59):
the way, I love that, is that your phrase? Like
you came up with that?

Speaker 1 (51:03):
Yeah, yeah, I love it.

Speaker 2 (51:05):
You said it turns out that whenever a part agrees
to not overwhelm, it won't overwhelm. So that's really interesting.
Can you kind of unpack that a little bit and
and how maybe a concrete example of how you've seen
that with a patient?

Speaker 1 (51:20):
Yeah? So, uh. You know a lot of therapies like
DBT and dialectical behavior therapy and others, a lot of
trauma therapies are very worried about the window of tolerance
of this from my language are exiled emotions and how

(51:40):
you have to have all these practices to try and
and contain all that. And so there are all these
what are called grounding practices which include a lot of
breath exercises, and you.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
Know you know what I'm talking about, right absolutely, I
have a whole book.

Speaker 1 (51:56):
Yeah, okay, yeah. So what I discovered was, if there's
a big rush of that kind of exiled emotion coming forward,
if you just ask the part to not overwhelm and
reassure it that by not overwhelming, it's much more likely

(52:17):
that you can help it. They won't overwhelm, you don't
have to do any of the grounding style, and your
client will suddenly be with the part rather than become
the part, and can start to help it that way.
So they have a lot of agency, is what I'm
trying to say. The only reason they tend to overwhelm

(52:37):
is because they know that if they don't totally take over,
you're going to lock them up again. So if they
know by not overwhelming, they're more likely to not be
locked up, they don't need to overwhelm. And again, all
this refers back to their sacred interveings. They have agency
that you can negotiate with them.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
Well, you are literally saying, we all have multiple personalities,
the ones that we label dissociative identity disorder. That's the
latest term for those people. The more we it's more
a matter of extremeness among the parts that it is
just that they are separate species in us, like they
have part they have multiple personalitis and we don't know.

(53:21):
We all have multiple personalities, is what you're saying.

Speaker 1 (53:23):
It is what I'm saying totally, And.

Speaker 2 (53:25):
I think I agree with that, and I agree with that, and.

Speaker 1 (53:27):
People with that diagnosis aren't so different from us, except
that because of the horrific trauma they suffered on a
daily basis, their system got blown apart more splitting.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
Yeah, no, a lot, you know, I hear you. Yeah,
but you know, even that diagnosis is controversial in the
field of psychiatry, as you know, you know, some people
claim that it's not even a thing, you know, And yeah,
here's another lall of inner physics. There's nothing inside of
you that has any power if you are in self
and not afraid of it. Wow wow, wow wow, how

(54:02):
do you how do you make that change in your
life where and go from being scared of your parts
to not being scared of your parts? Like, what's the
first step that someone can take to make that transformation?

Speaker 1 (54:16):
It turns out it's pretty simple. Like if I was
working with you and I need help, Well, if let's
pick a part you're scared off.

Speaker 2 (54:25):
You have one talking to women? Okay, no, talking to
someone I'm interested in admitting being vulnerable that I'm romantically
interested in a woman.

Speaker 1 (54:35):
Yeah, got it. Okay, So that's a part that's afraid
to do it. You're not necessarily afraid of that part?
Am I right?

Speaker 2 (54:42):
Afraid of rejection? I'm afraid of rejection?

Speaker 1 (54:45):
Yeah? Okay, so.

Speaker 2 (54:49):
Yeah, we could do that, So we can pick a
different one.

Speaker 1 (54:53):
Well, no, we can do that. How much time do
we have? I can't remember.

Speaker 2 (54:56):
I'm I'm good, brother, It's I'm just being ware of
your your time.

Speaker 1 (55:01):
But I'm okay. You want to do a piece of work,
real short one?

Speaker 2 (55:06):
You want to do people?

Speaker 1 (55:07):
Yeah? Sure?

Speaker 2 (55:07):
Why not? Why not? Why not?

Speaker 1 (55:09):
All right? So focus on that fear of rejection, yeah,
and find it in your body, around your body. M
where do you find it?

Speaker 2 (55:22):
It's interesting I would say that it actually it shows
up as a disconnect from self. It's almost like as
opposed to me finding it, it's like I can't find it,
if that makes sense. But you have a sense of it, yeah, true, Yeah, yeah,
I do. So just focus on that sense of it, okay,
and tell me how you feel toward this part. Well,

(55:43):
I am very judgmental about it. I I'm angry that
it keeps getting in my way of being able to
have a happier life and to have more courage in
going after what I want.

Speaker 1 (55:58):
So that makes sense that you would be angry at it.
But we're going to ask the part who doesn't like
it to give us the space to maybe help it instead.
And so see if that one who's so angry at
it could give us a little space in there and
relax back so we can actually get to know it
and help it. Okay, then focus on it again and

(56:23):
tell me how you feel toward it now.

Speaker 2 (56:26):
There is there is a compassion there, There is a
I wanted to give it. I want to give it
a hug and tell it to not be so scared.

Speaker 1 (56:36):
So so do that. So go ahead and let it
know you have compassion for it now, And if you
can just go ahead and hug it and let it
know it's not alone, that you are there and you
you can care for it, and see how it reacts.

Speaker 2 (56:55):
Well, it's not running away.

Speaker 1 (56:59):
Good. Yeah, and see if there's anything it wants you
to know about it's fear and don't think, just just
wait and see what comes.

Speaker 2 (57:09):
Yeah, I know something, something came. Something can it's it's
telling me that it's it can't let go of what
happened to me at age ten in summer camp.

Speaker 1 (57:22):
Okay, so let it know. That makes sense.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Okay, but.

Speaker 1 (57:31):
Are you open to getting out out of there where it.

Speaker 2 (57:34):
Stuck desperately want to not just not just open?

Speaker 1 (57:39):
Okay, So tell it first to really let you get
how bad that was for it. Let it whatever it
needs to trust that you get it, to let you
feel it and see it and sense it until it
feels like, now you really get how horrible that was?

Speaker 2 (58:00):
Hmm.

Speaker 1 (58:02):
Yeah, it's feeling like you get it now.

Speaker 2 (58:07):
Yeah, just ask it, just ask it, but exactly do
I ask it?

Speaker 1 (58:13):
Ask if it feels like now you really get how
bad it was?

Speaker 2 (58:16):
M m, yeah bad it was?

Speaker 1 (58:20):
Yeah? Or is there more it wants you to know?

Speaker 2 (58:24):
But it's like, really clinging too, not wanting to ever
experience that feeling again.

Speaker 1 (58:35):
Totally get that. Yeah, but we're going to keep working
with that. So we're gonna help it with that clinging.
But just ask again if it does feel like you
get how bad it was? Yeah? It does. Okay, So Scott,
I want you to go to that guy in that
time and be with him in the way he needed. Somebody.

(59:00):
Tell me when you're in there with him, I'm there,
how are you being with him?

Speaker 2 (59:08):
Well, I'm being supportive in a way no one was
with me at the time.

Speaker 1 (59:13):
Perfect, So just do that for a while until he
really trusts he's not alone with her. How's your reacting.

Speaker 2 (59:25):
With love?

Speaker 1 (59:26):
Good? Okay? And ask him if there's anything he wants
you to do for him back there before we take
him to a good place. Just don't think, just ask
him and wait for the answer. Yeah, what's he wants

(59:48):
you to do?

Speaker 2 (59:51):
Be one of those friends that last the situation with
me and said, there's many fish in the sea.

Speaker 1 (01:00:03):
So go ahead and do that for him.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
I did already. Sorry, And how was that? Curtn't wait?

Speaker 1 (01:00:09):
Mm hmmm. How does he react?

Speaker 2 (01:00:12):
He laughed, and he's like, yeah, that's just completely different reaction.

Speaker 1 (01:00:17):
Okay, yeah, So ask him now if he's ready to
leave that time and place with you and come to
either to your place there or to a fantasy place
of his choice.

Speaker 2 (01:00:32):
Yeah, he's definitely ready.

Speaker 1 (01:00:35):
Where does he want to go?

Speaker 2 (01:00:39):
Can I admit this on my podcast? It's up to you.

Speaker 1 (01:00:43):
So you got him there? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:00:44):
Oh yeah, how's he like it? He's got a very
different attitude all of a sudden.

Speaker 1 (01:00:50):
That's great.

Speaker 2 (01:00:51):
He's got a very different attitude. Wow, he's almost kind
of like asshole.

Speaker 1 (01:00:55):
Now, well we gotta yeah, we've got to help him
with that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:01:02):
I think he's overcompensated there.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
I think so too. Okay, you tell him, let him
he doesn't have yeah, tell him to slow down.

Speaker 2 (01:01:09):
Yeah yeah, okay, okay, I did.

Speaker 1 (01:01:13):
You can kind of be his mentor in this area.

Speaker 2 (01:01:16):
Yeah, I see that.

Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
But tell him he never has to go back to
that camp scene, and that you're gonna be his friend,
mentor parent. You're gonna be taking care of him now.

Speaker 2 (01:01:31):
Mm hmmm, amazing, Yeah I did. I did well. Now
you saying I can bring that protector guy, I can
bring that guy out anytime I want.

Speaker 1 (01:01:44):
Yeah? Wow. Yeah, But let's finish. We're not quite done, okay,
So ask him if now he's ready to unload the
feelings and believes he got back there.

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
He says, what does that mean to unload?

Speaker 1 (01:02:03):
We'll show him. All we need is his desire to
not carry this stuff anymore. The fear, yeah, the beliefs
about himself.

Speaker 2 (01:02:10):
Yes, definitely ready.

Speaker 1 (01:02:13):
And ask him where he carries that in his body,
Round his body.

Speaker 2 (01:02:18):
Where he has in the past carried it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
Just where he's carrying it still if he still is.

Speaker 2 (01:02:26):
Yeah, yeah, right here.

Speaker 1 (01:02:28):
Okay, And ask him what he'd like to give it
all up to light, water, fire, wind, earth, anything else. Light.
So bring in the light and have it shine on him,
and tell him to let all that out of his
chest and just let the light take it away. Yeah,

(01:02:49):
no need to carry this anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
Wow. Wow, in the background, noise stopped. What do I
do now doing? Now he's like a enthusiastic puppy.

Speaker 1 (01:03:09):
Good? And tell him now if he wants to, he
can invite qualities into his body he'd like to have
and just see what comes into him.

Speaker 2 (01:03:18):
Now, confidence, authenticity, and heart led.

Speaker 1 (01:03:30):
It's great. So how does he seemed now?

Speaker 2 (01:03:35):
I like him?

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
Yeah? Good? So again. Let him know he can hang
with you and you know, go to night clubs if
he wants, or whatever he wants, whatever he wants to do,
but he doesn't have to carry this stuff anymore.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
Wow, he said, that's revolutionary.

Speaker 1 (01:03:57):
And if you want, you can invite your other parts
to come in and see him, especially the one that
didn't like him. Have that guy come in and see
how he is different.

Speaker 2 (01:04:09):
Now Wow, wow, incredible, it's like a different guy.

Speaker 1 (01:04:18):
Yeah, that's right. Okay, wow, So does that feel complete
for that? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:04:29):
Yeah, amazing. Are you gonna send me the bill?

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
Happy to do it my gift?

Speaker 2 (01:04:37):
Thank you, Dick, You're welcome. I think we should end
this episode on that note. People just got a chance
to see in action.

Speaker 1 (01:04:47):
I appreciate your being so vulnerable in your in front
of your audience.

Speaker 2 (01:04:51):
I don't know how I feel about this, but I
actually I feel good. Of the course of the whole thing,
I felt better and better. But I also I think
that it's just something that a lot of people can
relate to and resonate with, whether or not you're a
male or female or whatever your gender is. I think
you can really relate to that feeling of being would

(01:05:13):
rather avoid than to be rejected.

Speaker 1 (01:05:17):
Yeah, you know, I didn't talk to a girl all
through high school. I was so afraid of that rejection.
And it wasn't until I went out for football in
college and I became a football star that I had
the courage to actually talk to alema. So I totally
get it.

Speaker 2 (01:05:36):
Yeah yeah, oh man. Well, thank you so much Dick
for the parts work, but also just being on my
podcast and for sparring a little bit with me as well.
And well, you're a legend in the field of in
my field, so I really have immense gratitude for you,
So thank.

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
You, Thank you Scott, and again thanks for being such
a good sport.

Speaker 2 (01:05:59):
And I really enjoyed our sparing so meo