…our culture,
and also a lot of psychotherapies,
demonized various parts of us,
and think they are what they seem to be—
which never turns out to be the truth.
~Richard “Dick” Schwartz
No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model
One of the presuppositions of NLP (Neurolinguistic Programming) is that behind every behavior is a positive intention, and that people are always doing the best they can at that moment, given the resources available to them.
This fits well with the Internal Family Systems Model (IFS) of individual psychotherapy Schwartz developed in the 1980s. Think of “parts” as relatively discrete subpersonalities, each with a unique viewpoint and qualities.
…before they got hurt, they were these what are called playful inner children; you’d love to be around them, because they have so much creativity and delight in the world, and want to be close to people, and a lot of innocence and playfulness. But after they get hurt, or terrified, or shamed, because they’re often the most sensitive parts of us—so traumas, they’re the ones who take in those burdens the most of fear, or worthlessness, or emotional pain, or sense of abandonment, or so on—once they get burdened by those feelings, we no longer want to be around them anymore because they have the power now to overwhelm us with that and make it so we can’t function or think a lot of the time. ~ Dick Schwartz
Having just completed a three-year intensive study called Dharma Path with Barbara Brodsky, Aaron, and John Orr, this is all very familiar: “Nothing that is of beauty and goodness is ever lost. The knowing of this is the gift of the dharma path, and the blessing to meet the teachers and the tools and the practices that can allow you to follow that path… And yes, I fully trust this path and that it will bring you home.”
Riding bike with a friend early one morning, I shared the story of Milarepa, the great Tibetan saint. The story is told masterfully as Into the Demon’s Mouth by Aura Glaser, published in Tricycle, the Buddhist Review. Milarepa’s story demonstrates that we can learn to face our fears with clarity and kindness.
None can deny the damage that is done by not doing so….
Everybody around us tells us, “Just move on. Don’t look back.” So, we lock them away, not knowing that we’re locking away our juice, and thinking we’re just moving on from the memories of the trauma or the emotions of the trauma. When you get a lot of exiles, you feel a lot more delicate, the world feels a lot more dangerous, and other parts are forced into these protector roles out of their naturally valuable states, and they become the critics, or they become the bingeing parts. ~ Dick Schwartz
The bingeing parts are within us all. Humans binge watch Netflix. Humans binge on exercise. We binge on wholesome and unwholesome thoughts, beliefs, and actions. We binge on political debates, prayer, health food, junk food. We binge on hate and even on romantic love.
When we don’t acknowledge all of who we are, those unacknowledged parts will land in what Jung called the “shadow” that we then project onto others, writes Glaser in Into the Demon’s Mouth.
But, perhaps, humans really can get curious enough to discover what our “parts” have been trying to protect us from, and we can get free by setting those parts (Schwartz calls these parts exiles) free.
Then I would have you, in your mind’s eye, enter that scene and be with her in that terrible time, and the way she needed somebody, which is a process we call a retrieval. We would do that until she was ready to leave with you and come either to the present with you or to fantasy place that was safe. Once she was there, I would have you ask if now that she trusts she never has to go back there again, if she’s willing to unload the feelings and beliefs she got from those times. Most of these exiles are at that point willing to give all that up because they know now they’re safe. ~ Dick Schwartz
Behind the behavior of unloading the feelings and beliefs that we got from painful or traumatic times in the past is the positive intent of having all the parts of us know now they’re safe and YOU can go on and enjoy the rest of your life.