I'm going to start with a quick overview of the therapy modality called Internal Family Systems (IFS). I first came across it in a book last year sometime, I think, and it piqued my curiosity so I made a mental note to look into it more. In the spring I finally did that and bought the book Self Therapy by Jay Earley. I started reading it, and hadn't gotten very far when loads of life stuff came up and so I set it aside. But the most basic gist of IFS is that everyone is made up of parts, kind of like the little people inside the girl's head in the Pixar movie Inside Out. We tend to think of ourselves as a unified whole, but we really aren't. That's why one part of you might be really excited to go to a party, but another part of you is dreading it. The goal of IFS is to help resolve issues with the parts that are causing difficulty in your life. The method categorizes some parts as Exiles (those that need protecting) and Protectors (those that show up to do the protecting). The goal is to operate from our true Self, which is curious, compassionate, caring, wise, etc. When our parts are in the driver's seat, we often do things that we don't really want to do because we are operating from a defensive or protective place. Another key idea of IFS is that there are no bad parts. They are all good, and they all have your best interest in mind as they do their roles. Check out this video if you'd like an overview by the originator of the method.)
We were facing the decision to sell the house we moved out of last year, which was not our original plan when we moved out, but a variety of things had changed and so our original plans (to do a tear down/rebuild on the same property) seemed a lot less feasible. This was the house we'd raised our family in for 16 years, most of our time together. And since I did homebirth for four of the kids, three of our children were actually born in that house. I had thousands upon thousands of memories all around the house and around the yard. I couldn't even think about parting with this house without getting completely overwhelmed and facing what felt like the verge of a panic attack. David was pretty insistent that this was the path that we needed to take, but I was so far away from being able to consider the possibility of selling the house that we were at an impasse. Finally, things got to the point where it really needed to be addressed. Still, my emotions were a mad crazy storm of chaos. What was I going to do?
Somehow I had the idea to use the tools I'd barely learned about in the Self Therapy book. I dropped my kids off at their class, and took the book and my laptop to a nearby coffee shop. "Here goes nothing," I thought. Really not sure how it was possibly going to be of any use, but needing to try something. In the language of IFS, I chose the "Trailhead" of the house, a trailhead being an area you want to explore. Here's the full excerpt from the book and what guided me through the exercise:
Exercise: Identifying the Parts at a Trailhead
Choose a trailhead that you are interested in exploring.
Using the approach described above, make a list of each of the parts involved with that trailhead. For each part, write the following if you can:
Name of part
What it feels emotionally
What it looks like
What it feels like in your body and where
What it says
How it makes you behave
What it wants
So I started with this process. I ended up identifying five different parts that were quite different in their feelings about the house situation. This was kind of a lightning bolt moment for me. NO WONDER I would get overwhelmed every time I tried to dig in on this issue. All of these parts of me were in opposition to each other. But after I went through this exercise (and I didn't answer every question listed above for each part, just what felt most relevant) and gave all of the parts of me a chance to voice their feelings, I was able to engage with the idea of selling the house and use other parts of my self to figure out what would be the best decision for us, given the way things had changed. It really felt like a magic wand in some ways. Wow.
Fast forward to this weekend. I had a chance to drive up and spend some time with a friend who lives about an hour and a half away. The plan was for me to sleep there and then we'd go kayaking the next day up the canyon so I wouldn't have quite as much driving in one day. We had a lovely evening together, and when I was heading to bed I was checking my phone and saw that David was at our friends' house, who live about 40 minutes away from us. (This is one of those experiences that I'd definitely prefer to self-edit out of this, but I'm practicing honesty and vulnerability and all that good (but feels crappy) stuff, so here goes.) I had two primary reactions, and they hit hard, like a freight train honestly. Completely took me out of the happy place I was in after a lovely few hours with my friend. One emotion was anger/exasperation about him choosing to be out so late tonight when I was counting on him to do some things in the morning that I usually do so the day would run smoothly and people would get to where they needed to go and all the pets would be cared for. The other emotion is best described as jealousy, but that didn't quite capture everything. It really felt awful. Jealousy, feeling left out, sadness, insecurity. Blerg. A lot of it and it was all miserable. None of this feeling could I really relate to rationally, so my rational part kept zeroing in on how irresponsible I felt David was being, and tried to make him into the bad guy. Sadly this whole setup was not new, so when I flooded him with emotional texts, he wasn't surprised. I ended up having a very hard time settling down to sleep, and when I woke up, it didn't take long for me to feel some of the emotions surface again. I figured David and I were going to be in an old familiar pattern again, I dismissed a lot of the progress we'd made in our relationship, I figured the friendship I had with these friends was not really what I thought it was, and kind of prepared to just loosen that connection.
Our time kayaking was wonderful and we had lots of time to talk, but I also had time to reflect a bit and just be in my emotions. I started driving to a birthday gathering for a friend and I was not looking forward to being with David. I noticed how closed my heart felt. I felt very walled off. Definitely not open. I gave this part of me the name "Cold-hearted bitch," because I was mad about her showing up again and making me feel so shitty. I felt like I was standing at a crossroad and had to decide what to do. Should I give up this lovely friendship with our friends and go back to the old pattern of keeping David at a distance? That's what it seemed like cold-hearted bitch wanted. Or was there another way?
I credit what happened next to the two podcast episodes about IFS that I listened to this week. (Check out the podcast Almost Awakened episodes 156 and 160). In a moment of near desperation (I really didn't want to lose the friendship and the closeness with these people I was feeling so closed-off towards) I said, inwardly, to the cold-hearted bitch, "What are you trying to protect me from?" Immediately I had an indescribably rich and devastating sensation of hurt wash over me and I knew unequivocally what she was trying to protect me from. "Oh," I said aloud, as the tears began to flow.
What immediately came to mind was little Mindy, age 12 I think (the picture is me around age 9, I'll get to that later). It was near the end of the school year which meant it was also near my birthday. I had been planning to have my two closest friends come over and we'd do something fun. It wasn't my year for a bigger friend party, but I still got to have something smaller. I remember learning that those two friends were getting together and I asked them about it. I was the reason they even knew each other, so it was a little odd that they were getting together without me. The one I asked said that they were doing something to get ready for my birthday. Oh, how nice of them, I thought. It turned out later that she lied, and it wasn't too long after my birthday get together that it became apparent that I'd lost my new good friend to the person who had been my best friend the past two years. Summer came and they spent lots of time together, excluding me from any of it. I was so so so hurt. I didn't understand why I'd been rejected like that. I didn't have anyone to talk to about it, either, which made it feel very shameful. What was wrong with me that I would be so unkindly treated?
I started the next school year without a close friend, and it was rough. I did end up finding someone who I connected with pretty well, even though that was only to last a year before I realized it really wasn't a very good fit for me for a few reasons. So I started high school with no close friends but a number of looser friendly connections. I still remember walking down the halls at lunch time trying to see who I might sit with for lunch. I bounced around a bit that first month until I somehow connected with one of my friends from elementary school and our reconnection was magical! We became inseparable and had the best time together the rest of that year and also sophomore year. Junior year our friend group expanded a bit and we also turned 16 and therefore old enough to date.
Looking back, I still don't understand all the factors at play, and of course I am not able to be in anyone else's minds, but the way it felt was that my best friend was skinnier and cuter and therefore more attractive to boys. She had two or three over the rest of our high school time that liked her and she dated them regularly. Our extended friend group grew as the social scene opportunities opened up with dating and also drivers licenses coming into play, and we attended various parties with people we hadn't known all that well previously. I think it was a couple of months into senior year that this best friend of mine for the past 3 years suddenly became a lot less available and responsive. She was now often hanging out with one of the cheerleaders, and kind of left our smaller circle behind. I very much felt like I was abandoned for the social capital increase of befriending someone who was more popular. It hurt just as much as it had years before. It turned out that she had another best friend she'd also ditched, and we eventually connected and found out she'd kind of poisoned us against each other the past couple of years and maintained the advantage of having both of us on the hook so she'd never be alone, then ditched us both when a more useful option came along. So the other spurned friend and I became pretty good friends, and that's how we finished out high school.
Returning to the present: I was driving down the freeway, feeling all of these 30-ish year old emotions again. I could see how Cold-hearted Bitch really wanted to protect me from getting hurt again by people I loved and thought had loved me. I saw that she'd shown up for me a number of times in the past when I felt insecure about things with David or other friends. How she stopped me from feeling hurt when I was left out by demonizing people and convincing myself I didn't need them anyways. By closing my heart to them. By not really fully trusting people when they expressed lovely and kind feelings about me. Keeping them at a little more of a distance or discounting their words so I wouldn't feel so hurt when they eventually discarded our friendship. Oh. Maybe the name Cold-hearted Bitch was a little harsh. Maybe she'd only been showing up because it hurt so much to feel that rejection, especially when it was for reasons unknown. I started to see the shame that these rejections had caused me. If only I'd been more popular, skinnier, cuter, more fashionable, more talented...I wouldn't have been rejected for someone else. I realized last year that my core fear was abandonment, but I hadn't seen the full magnitude of it, nor determined all the ways it was still showing up in my life. I decided to rename Cold-hearted Bitch. I'd misjudged her. I'd call her Stone-Cold Kate instead, and I could see how strong she was to show up for me. Thank you, Kate.
I started thinking about Little Mindy. And since I'd recently found the above photo on my phone and shared it with a friend, I thought about this specific Little Mindy. I look at this picture, which I think was taken my first day at the Gifted & Talented program I attended in Elementary School, and I see how earnest I was. I was bright and curious and kind. I was playful and silly and a good friend. Middle school years were tough, and made so much tougher by the friends that didn't stick around. This combined with my growing self-awareness (which I think is pretty normal for the age) had a major effect on decreasing my comfort and confidence in the world. Oh, Little Mindy. I remember all of the stuff you carried inside because there wasn't anyone to talk to about it. I'm sorry it was so hard. I wish you'd had some friends who could have appreciated you through all of those rough years. I wish you'd had parents who you could have talked to about these hard things. I wish you wouldn't have internalized the rejection and felt that it was because you were somehow deficient in any way. I wish someone would have told you that sometimes kids are just jerks and sometimes they are just clueless, and it doesn't really have anything to do with you. So me, my 45 year old self, went and told those things to little Mindy. And I told her that she is going to go on to make some amazing friends who will see her and really love her. And that her big heart and earnestness and playfulness will become some of the things about her that her friends love. And they won't care about looks or popularity or any of those things that seem to run the show in middle and high school.
I remembered being in high school and really really leaning into the Simon & Garfunkel song "I am a rock," and listening to that to help me feel more immune to feelings. I remember writing a poem about building a wall around myself to stay safe. This was all the work of Stone-cold Kate, keeping me safe. One part of IFS is that you can talk to your protectors and let them know that you aren't that little person anymore. I'm not 12 or 17. I'm 45. I actually have a lot more awareness and skills now that I didn't have then. I can look around for proof of the realness of my friendships. I can see the relationship that David and I have nurtured over the last 22 years and believe that it is real and durable. I can think and feel my way through things pretty effectively now. So I can tell Kate thank you for working so hard, but I can find her a new job. I'm not sure what that will be yet, but I'm looking forward to finding out.