17. PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER: SELF-LEADERSHIP

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

I
CHAPTER 17
PUTTING THE PIECES TOGETHER:
SELF-LEADERSHIP
This being human is a guest house. Every morn­ing is a new
arrival. A joy, a depres­sion, a mean­ness, some momen­tary
aware­ness comes as an unex­pect­ed vis­i­tor.… Wel­come and
enter­tain them all. Treat each guest hon­or­ably. The dark thought,
the shame, the mal­ice, meet them at the door laugh­ing, and invite
them in. Be grate­ful for who­ev­er comes, because each has been
sent as a guide from beyond.
—Rumi
A man has as many social selves as there are indi­vid­u­als who
rec­og­nize him.
—William James, The Prin­ci­ples of Psy­chol­o­gy
t was ear­ly in my career, and I had been see­ing Mary, a shy, lone­ly, and
phys­i­cal­ly col­lapsed young woman, for about three months in week­ly
psy­chother­a­py, deal­ing with the rav­ages of her ter­ri­ble his­to­ry of ear­ly
abuse. One day I opened the door to my wait­ing room and saw her stand­ing
there provoca­tive­ly, dressed in a miniskirt, her hair dyed flam­ing red, with a
cup of cof­fee in one hand and a snarl on her face. “You must be Dr. van der
Kolk,” she said. “My name is Jane, and I came to warn you not to believe
any the lies that Mary has been telling you. Can I come in and tell you
about her?” I was stunned but for­tu­nate­ly kept myself from con­fronting
“Jane” and instead heard her out. Over the course of our ses­sion I met not
only Jane but also a hurt lit­tle girl and an angry male ado­les­cent. That was
the begin­ning of a long and pro­duc­tive treat­ment.
Mary was my first encounter with dis­so­cia­tive iden­ti­ty dis­or­der (DID),
which at that time was called mul­ti­ple per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der. As dra­mat­ic as
its symp­toms are, the inter­nal split­ting and emer­gence of dis­tinct iden­ti­ties
expe­ri­enced in DID rep­re­sent only the extreme end of the spec­trum of
men­tal life. The sense of being inhab­it­ed by war­ring impuls­es or parts is
com­mon to all of us but par­tic­u­lar­ly to trau­ma­tized peo­ple who had to resort
to extreme mea­sures in order to sur­vive. Exploring—even befriend­ing—
those parts is an impor­tant com­po­nent of heal­ing.
DESPERATE TIMES REQUIRE DESPERATE MEASURES
We all know what hap­pens when we feel humil­i­at­ed: We put all our ener­gy
into pro­tect­ing our­selves, devel­op­ing what­ev­er sur­vival strate­gies we can.
We may repress our feel­ings; we may get furi­ous and plot revenge. We may
decide to become so pow­er­ful and suc­cess­ful that nobody can ever hurt us
again. Many behav­iors that are clas­si­fied as psy­chi­atric prob­lems, includ­ing
some obses­sions, com­pul­sions, and pan­ic attacks, as well as most self-
destruc­tive behav­iors, start­ed out as strate­gies for self-pro­tec­tion. These
adap­ta­tions to trau­ma can so inter­fere with the capac­i­ty to func­tion that
health-care providers and patients them­selves often believe that full
recov­ery is beyond reach. View­ing these symp­toms as per­ma­nent
dis­abil­i­ties nar­rows the focus of treat­ment to find­ing the prop­er drug
reg­i­men, which can lead to life­long dependence—as though trau­ma
sur­vivors were like kid­ney patients on dialysis.1
It is much more pro­duc­tive to see aggres­sion or depres­sion, arro­gance
or pas­siv­i­ty as learned behav­iors: Some­where along the line, the patient
came to believe that he or she could sur­vive only if he or she was tough,
invis­i­ble, or absent, or that it was safer to give up. Like trau­mat­ic mem­o­ries
that keep intrud­ing until they are laid to rest, trau­mat­ic adap­ta­tions con­tin­ue
until the human organ­ism feels safe and inte­grates all the parts of itself that
are stuck in fight­ing or ward­ing off the trau­ma.
Every trau­ma sur­vivor I’ve met is resilient in his or her own way, and
every one of their sto­ries inspires awe at how peo­ple cope. Know­ing how
much ener­gy the sheer act of sur­vival requires keeps me from being
sur­prised at the price they often pay: the absence of a lov­ing rela­tion­ship
with their own bod­ies, minds, and souls.
Cop­ing takes its toll. For many chil­dren it is safer to hate them­selves
than to risk their rela­tion­ship with their care­givers by express­ing anger or
by run­ning away. As a result, abused chil­dren are like­ly to grow up
believ­ing that they are fun­da­men­tal­ly unlov­able; that was the only way their
young minds could explain why they were treat­ed so bad­ly. They sur­vive by
deny­ing, ignor­ing, and split­ting off large chunks of real­i­ty: They for­get the
abuse; they sup­press their rage or despair; they numb their phys­i­cal
sen­sa­tions. If you were abused as a child, you are like­ly to have a child­like
part liv­ing inside you that is frozen in time, still hold­ing fast to this kind of
self-loathing and denial. Many adults who sur­vive ter­ri­ble expe­ri­ences are
caught in the same trap. Push­ing away intense feel­ings can be high­ly
adap­tive in the short run. It may help you pre­serve your dig­ni­ty and
inde­pen­dence; it may help you main­tain focus on crit­i­cal tasks like sav­ing a
com­rade, tak­ing care of your kids, or rebuild­ing your house.
The prob­lems come lat­er. After see­ing a friend blown up, a sol­dier may
return to civil­ian life and try to put the expe­ri­ence out of his mind. A
pro­tec­tive part of him knows how to be com­pe­tent at his job and how to get
along with col­leagues. But he may habit­u­al­ly erupt in rage at his girl­friend
or become numb and frozen when the plea­sure of sur­ren­der­ing to her touch
makes him feel he is los­ing con­trol. He prob­a­bly will not be aware that his
mind auto­mat­i­cal­ly asso­ciates pas­sive sur­ren­der with the paral­y­sis he felt
when his friend was killed. So anoth­er pro­tec­tive part steps in to cre­ate a
diver­sion: He gets angry and, hav­ing no idea what set him off, he thinks
he’s mad about some­thing his girl­friend did. Of course, if he keeps blow­ing
up at her (and sub­se­quent girl­friends), he will become more and more
iso­lat­ed. But he may nev­er real­ize that a trau­ma­tized part is trig­gered by
pas­siv­i­ty and that anoth­er part, an angry man­ag­er, is step­ping in to pro­tect
that vul­ner­a­ble part. Help­ing these parts to give up their extreme beliefs is
how ther­a­py can save people’s lives.
As we saw in chap­ter 13, a cen­tral task for recov­ery from trau­ma is to
learn to live with the mem­o­ries of the past with­out being over­whelmed by
them in the present. But most sur­vivors, includ­ing those who are
func­tion­ing well—even brilliantly—in some aspects of their lives, face
anoth­er, even greater chal­lenge: recon­fig­ur­ing a brain/mind sys­tem that was
con­struct­ed to cope with the worst. Just as we need to revis­it trau­mat­ic
mem­o­ries in order to inte­grate them, we need to revis­it the parts of
our­selves that devel­oped the defen­sive habits that helped us to sur­vive.
THE MIND IS A MOSAIC
We all have parts. Right now a part of me feels like tak­ing a nap; anoth­er
part wants to keep writ­ing. Still feel­ing injured by an offen­sive e‑mail
mes­sage, a part of me wants to hit “reply” on a sting­ing put-down, while a
dif­fer­ent part wants to shrug it off. Most peo­ple who know me have seen
my intense, sin­cere, and irri­ta­ble parts; some have met the lit­tle snarling
dog that lives inside me. My chil­dren rem­i­nisce about going on fam­i­ly
vaca­tions with my play­ful and adven­tur­ous parts.
When you walk into the office in the morn­ing and see the storm clouds
over your boss’s head, you know pre­cise­ly what is com­ing. That angry part
has a char­ac­ter­is­tic tone of voice, vocab­u­lary, and body posture—so
dif­fer­ent from yes­ter­day, when you shared pic­tures of your kids. Parts are
not just feel­ings but dis­tinct ways of being, with their own beliefs, agen­das,
and roles in the over­all ecol­o­gy of our lives.
How well we get along with our­selves depends large­ly on our inter­nal
lead­er­ship skills—how well we lis­ten to our dif­fer­ent parts, make sure they
feel tak­en care of, and keep them from sab­o­tag­ing one anoth­er. Parts often
come across as absolutes when in fact they rep­re­sent only one ele­ment in a
com­plex con­stel­la­tion of thoughts, emo­tions, and sen­sa­tions. If Mar­garet
shouts, “I hate you!” in the mid­dle of an argu­ment, Joe prob­a­bly thinks she
despis­es him—and in that moment Mar­garet might agree. But in fact only a
part of her is angry, and that part tem­porar­i­ly obscures her gen­er­ous and
affec­tion­ate feel­ings, which may well return when she sees the dev­as­ta­tion
on Joe’s face.
Every major school of psy­chol­o­gy rec­og­nizes that peo­ple have
sub­per­son­al­i­ties and gives them dif­fer­ent names.2 In 1890 William James
wrote: “[I]t must be admit­ted that … the total pos­si­ble con­scious­ness may
be split into parts which coex­ist, but mutu­al­ly ignore each oth­er, and share
the objects of knowl­edge between them.”3 Carl Jung wrote: “The psy­che is
a self-reg­u­lat­ing sys­tem that main­tains its equi­lib­ri­um just as the body
does,”4 “The nat­ur­al state of the human psy­che con­sists in a jostling
togeth­er of its com­po­nents and in their con­tra­dic­to­ry behavior,”5 and “The
rec­on­cil­i­a­tion of these oppo­sites is a major prob­lem. Thus, the adver­sary is
none oth­er than ‘the oth­er in me.’”6
Mod­ern neu­ro­science has con­firmed this notion of the mind as a kind
of soci­ety. Michael Gaz­zani­ga, who con­duct­ed pio­neer­ing split-brain
research, con­clud­ed that the mind is com­posed of semi­au­tonomous
func­tion­ing mod­ules, each of which has a spe­cial role.7 In his book The
Social Brain (1985) he writes, “But what of the idea that the self is not a
uni­fied being, and there may exist with­in us sev­er­al realms of
con­scious­ness? … From our [split-brain] stud­ies the new idea emerges that
there are lit­er­al­ly sev­er­al selves, and they do not nec­es­sar­i­ly ‘con­verse’ with
each oth­er internally.”8 MIT sci­en­tist Mar­vin Min­sky, a pio­neer of arti­fi­cial
intel­li­gence, declared: “The leg­end of the sin­gle Self can only divert us
from the tar­get of that inquiry.9 … [I]t can make sense to think there exists,
inside your brain, a soci­ety of dif­fer­ent minds. Like mem­bers of a fam­i­ly,
the dif­fer­ent minds can work togeth­er to help each oth­er, each still hav­ing
its own men­tal expe­ri­ences that the oth­ers nev­er know about.”10
Ther­a­pists who are trained to see peo­ple as com­plex human beings with
mul­ti­ple char­ac­ter­is­tics and poten­tial­i­ties can help them explore their
sys­tem of inner parts and take care of the wound­ed facets of them­selves.
There are sev­er­al such treat­ment approach­es, includ­ing the struc­tur­al
dis­so­ci­a­tion mod­el devel­oped by my Dutch col­leagues Onno van der Hart
and Ellert Nijen­huis and Atlanta-based Kathy Steel, that is wide­ly prac­ticed
in Europe and Richard Kluft’s work in the Unit­ed States.11
Twen­ty years after work­ing with Mary, I met Richard Schwartz, the
devel­op­er of inter­nal fam­i­ly sys­tems ther­a­py (IFS). It was through his work
that Minsky’s “fam­i­ly” metaphor tru­ly came to life for me and offered a
sys­tem­at­ic way to work with the split-off parts that result from trau­ma. At
the core of IFS is the notion that the mind of each of us is like a fam­i­ly in
which the mem­bers have dif­fer­ent lev­els of matu­ri­ty, excitabil­i­ty, wis­dom,
and pain. The parts form a net­work or sys­tem in which change in any one
part will affect all the oth­ers.
The IFS mod­el helped me real­ize that dis­so­ci­a­tion occurs on a
con­tin­u­um. In trau­ma the self-sys­tem breaks down, and parts of the self
become polar­ized and go to war with one anoth­er. Self-loathing coex­ists
(and fights) with grandios­i­ty; lov­ing care with hatred; numb­ing and
pas­siv­i­ty with rage and aggres­sion. These extreme parts bear the bur­den of
the trau­ma.
In IFS a part is con­sid­ered not just a pass­ing emo­tion­al state or
cus­tom­ary thought pat­tern but a dis­tinct men­tal sys­tem with its own his­to­ry,
abil­i­ties, needs, and worldview.12 Trau­ma injects parts with beliefs and
emo­tions that hijack them out of their nat­u­ral­ly valu­able state. For exam­ple,
we all have parts that are child­like and fun. When we are abused, these are
the parts that are hurt the most, and they become frozen, car­ry­ing the pain,
ter­ror, and betray­al of abuse. This bur­den makes them toxic—parts of
our­selves that we need to deny at all costs. Because they are locked away
inside, IFS calls them the exiles.
At this point oth­er parts orga­nize to pro­tect the inter­nal fam­i­ly from the
exiles. These pro­tec­tors keep the tox­ic parts away, but in so doing they take
on some of the ener­gy of the abuser. Crit­i­cal and per­fec­tion­is­tic man­agers
can make sure we nev­er get close to any­one or dri­ve us to be relent­less­ly
pro­duc­tive. Anoth­er group of pro­tec­tors, which IFS calls fire­fight­ers, are
emer­gency respon­ders, act­ing impul­sive­ly when­ev­er an expe­ri­ence trig­gers
an exiled emo­tion.
Each split-off part holds dif­fer­ent mem­o­ries, beliefs, and phys­i­cal
sen­sa­tions; some hold the shame, oth­ers the rage, some the plea­sure and
excite­ment, anoth­er the intense lone­li­ness or the abject com­pli­ance. These
are all aspects of the abuse expe­ri­ence. The crit­i­cal insight is that all these
parts have a func­tion: to pro­tect the self from feel­ing the full ter­ror of
anni­hi­la­tion.
Chil­dren who act out their pain rather than lock­ing it down are often
diag­nosed with “oppo­si­tion­al defi­ant behav­ior,” “attach­ment dis­or­der,” or
“con­duct dis­or­der.” But these labels ignore the fact that rage and
with­draw­al are only facets of a whole range of des­per­ate attempts at
sur­vival. Try­ing to con­trol a child’s behav­ior while fail­ing to address the
under­ly­ing issue—the abuse—leads to treat­ments that are inef­fec­tive at best
and harm­ful at worst. As they grow up, their parts do not spon­ta­neous­ly
inte­grate into a coher­ent per­son­al­i­ty but con­tin­ue to lead a rel­a­tive­ly
autonomous exis­tence.
Parts that are “out” may be entire­ly unaware of the oth­er parts of the
system.13 Most of the men I eval­u­at­ed with regard to their child­hood
molesta­tion by Catholic priests took ana­bol­ic steroids and spent an
inor­di­nate amount of time in the gym pump­ing iron. These com­pul­sive
body­builders lived in a mas­cu­line cul­ture of sweat, foot­ball, and beer,
where weak­ness and fear were care­ful­ly con­cealed. Only after they felt safe
with me did I meet the ter­ri­fied kids inside.
Patients may also dis­like the parts that are out: the parts that are angry,
destruc­tive, or crit­i­cal. But IFS offers a frame­work for under­stand­ing them
—and, also impor­tant, talk­ing about them in a non­pathol­o­giz­ing way.
Rec­og­niz­ing that each part is stuck with bur­dens from the past and
respect­ing its func­tion in the over­all sys­tem makes it feel less threat­en­ing or
over­whelm­ing.
As Schwartz states: “If one accepts the basic idea that peo­ple have an
innate dri­ve toward nur­tur­ing their own health, this implies that, when
peo­ple have chron­ic prob­lems, some­thing gets in the way of access­ing inner
resources. Rec­og­niz­ing this, the role of ther­a­pists is to col­lab­o­rate rather
than to teach, con­front, or fill holes in your psyche.”14 The first step in this
col­lab­o­ra­tion is to assure the inter­nal sys­tem that all parts are wel­come and
that all of them—even those that are sui­ci­dal or destructive—were formed
in an attempt to pro­tect the self-sys­tem, no mat­ter how much they now
seem to threat­en it.
SELF-LEADERSHIP
IFS rec­og­nizes that the cul­ti­va­tion of mind­ful self-lead­er­ship is the
foun­da­tion for heal­ing from trau­ma. Mind­ful­ness not only makes it pos­si­ble
to sur­vey our inter­nal land­scape with com­pas­sion and curios­i­ty but can also
active­ly steer us in the right direc­tion for self-care. All systems—families,
orga­ni­za­tions, or nations—can oper­ate effec­tive­ly only if they have clear­ly
defined and com­pe­tent lead­er­ship. The inter­nal fam­i­ly is no dif­fer­ent: All
facets of our selves need to be attend­ed to. The inter­nal leader must wise­ly
dis­trib­ute the avail­able resources and sup­ply a vision for the whole that
takes all the parts into account.
As Richard Schwartz explains:
The inter­nal sys­tem of an abuse vic­tim dif­fers from the non-abuse
sys­tem with regard to the con­sis­tent absence of effec­tive
lead­er­ship, the extreme rules under which the parts func­tion, and
the absence of any con­sis­tent bal­ance or har­mo­ny. Typ­i­cal­ly, the
parts oper­ate around out­dat­ed assump­tions and beliefs derived
from the child­hood abuse, believ­ing, for exam­ple, that it is still
extreme­ly dan­ger­ous to reveal secrets about child­hood expe­ri­ences
which were endured.15
What hap­pens when the self is no longer in charge? IFS calls this
“blend­ing”: a con­di­tion in which the Self iden­ti­fies with a part, as in “I want
to kill myself” or “I hate you.” Notice the dif­fer­ence from “A part of me
wish­es that I were dead” or “A part of me gets trig­gered when you do that
and makes me want to kill you.”
Schwartz makes two asser­tions that extend the con­cept of mind­ful­ness
into the realm of active lead­er­ship. The first is that this Self does not need
to be cul­ti­vat­ed or devel­oped. Beneath the sur­face of the pro­tec­tive parts of
trau­ma sur­vivors there exists an undam­aged essence, a Self that is
con­fi­dent, curi­ous, and calm, a Self that has been shel­tered from destruc­tion
by the var­i­ous pro­tec­tors that have emerged in their efforts to ensure
sur­vival. Once those pro­tec­tors trust that it is safe to sep­a­rate, the Self will
spon­ta­neous­ly emerge, and the parts can be enlist­ed in the heal­ing process.
The sec­ond assump­tion is that, rather than being a pas­sive observ­er,
this mind­ful Self can help reor­ga­nize the inner sys­tem and com­mu­ni­cate
with the parts in ways that help those parts trust that there is some­one inside
who can han­dle things. Again neu­ro­science research shows that this is not
just a metaphor. Mind­ful­ness increas­es acti­va­tion of the medi­al pre­frontal
cor­tex and decreas­es acti­va­tion of struc­tures like the amyg­dala that trig­ger
our emo­tion­al respons­es. This increas­es our con­trol over the emo­tion­al
brain.
Even more than encour­ag­ing a rela­tion­ship between a ther­a­pist and a
help­less patient, IFS focus­es on cul­ti­vat­ing an inner rela­tion­ship between
the Self and the var­i­ous pro­tec­tive parts. In this mod­el of treat­ment the Self
doesn’t only wit­ness or pas­sive­ly observe, as in some med­i­ta­tion tra­di­tions;
it has an active lead­er­ship role. The Self is like an orches­tra con­duc­tor who
helps all the parts to func­tion har­mo­nious­ly as a sym­pho­ny rather than a
cacoph­o­ny.
GETTING TO KNOW THE INTERNAL LANDSCAPE
The task of the ther­a­pist is to help patients sep­a­rate this con­fus­ing blend
into sep­a­rate enti­ties, so that they are able to say: “This part of me is like a
lit­tle child, and that part of me is more mature but feels like a vic­tim.” They
might not like many of these parts, but iden­ti­fy­ing them makes them less
intim­i­dat­ing or over­whelm­ing. The next step is to encour­age patients to
sim­ply ask each pro­tec­tive part as it emerges to “stand back” tem­porar­i­ly so
that we can see what it is pro­tect­ing. When this is done again and again, the
parts begin to unblend from the Self and make space for mind­ful self-
obser­va­tion. Patients learn to put their fear, rage, or dis­gust on hold and
open up into states of curios­i­ty and self-reflec­tion. From the sta­ble
per­spec­tive of Self they can begin con­struc­tive inner dia­logues with their
parts.
Patients are asked to iden­ti­fy the part involved in the cur­rent prob­lem,
like feel­ing worth­less, aban­doned, or obsessed with venge­ful thoughts. As
they ask them­selves, “What inside me feels that way?” an image may come
to mind.16 Maybe the depressed part looks like an aban­doned child, or an
aging man, or an over­whelmed nurse tak­ing care of the wound­ed; a
venge­ful part might appear as a com­bat marine or a mem­ber of a street
gang.
Next the ther­a­pist asks, “How do you feel toward that (sad, venge­ful,
ter­ri­fied) part of you?” This sets the stage for mind­ful self-obser­va­tion by
sep­a­rat­ing the “you” from the part in ques­tion. If the patient has an extreme
response like “I hate it,” the ther­a­pist knows that there is anoth­er pro­tec­tive
part blend­ed with Self. He or she might then ask, “See if the part that hates
it would step back.” Then the pro­tec­tive part is often thanked for its
vig­i­lance and assured that it can return any­time that it is need­ed. If the
pro­tec­tive part is will­ing, the fol­low-up ques­tion is: “How do you feel
toward the (pre­vi­ous­ly reject­ed) part now?” The patient is like­ly to say
some­thing like “I won­der why it is so (sad, venge­ful etc.).” This sets the
stage for get­ting to know the part better—for exam­ple, by inquir­ing how old
it is and how it came to feel the way it does.
Once a patient man­i­fests a crit­i­cal mass of Self, this kind of dia­logue
begins to take place spon­ta­neous­ly. At this point it’s impor­tant for the
ther­a­pist to step aside and just keep an eye out for oth­er parts that might
inter­fere, or make occa­sion­al empath­ic com­ments, or ask ques­tions like
“What do you say to the part about that?” or “Where do you want to go
now?” or “What feels like the right next step?” as well as the ubiq­ui­tous
Self-detect­ing ques­tion, “How do you feel toward the part now?”
A LIFE IN PARTS
Joan came to see me to help her man­age her uncon­trol­lable tem­per tantrums
and to deal with her guilt about her numer­ous affairs, most recent­ly with her
ten­nis coach. As she put it in our first ses­sion: “I go from being a kick-ass
pro­fes­sion­al woman to a whim­per­ing child, to a furi­ous bitch, to a piti­less
eat­ing machine in the course of ten min­utes. I have no idea which of these I
real­ly am.”
By this point in the ses­sion, Joan had already cri­tiqued the prints on my
wall, my rick­ety fur­ni­ture, and my messy desk. Offense was her best
defense. She was prepar­ing to get hurt again—I’d prob­a­bly let her down, as
so many peo­ple had before. She knew that for ther­a­py to work, she’d have
to make her­self vul­ner­a­ble, so she had to find out if I could tol­er­ate her
anger, fear, and sor­row. I real­ized that the only way to counter her
defen­sive­ness was by show­ing a high lev­el of inter­est in the details of her
life, demon­strat­ing unwa­ver­ing sup­port for the risk she took in talk­ing with
me, and accept­ing the parts she was most ashamed of.
I asked Joan if she had noticed the part of her­self that was crit­i­cal. She
acknowl­edged that she had, and I asked her how she felt toward that crit­ic.
This key ques­tion allowed her to begin to sep­a­rate from that part and to
access her Self. Joan respond­ed that she hat­ed the crit­ic, because it
remind­ed her of her moth­er. When I asked her what that crit­i­cal part might
be pro­tect­ing, her anger sub­sided, and she became more curi­ous and
thought­ful: “I won­der why she finds it nec­es­sary to call me some of the
same names that my moth­er used to call me, and worse.” She talked about
how scared she had been of her mom grow­ing up and how she felt that she
nev­er could do any­thing right. The crit­ic was obvi­ous­ly a man­ag­er: Not
only was it pro­tect­ing Joan from me, but it was try­ing to pre­empt her
mother’s crit­i­cism.
Over the next few weeks Joan told me that she had been sex­u­al­ly
molest­ed by her mother’s boyfriend, prob­a­bly around the time she was in
the first or sec­ond grade. She thought she’d been “ruined” for inti­mate
rela­tion­ships. While she was demand­ing and crit­i­cal of her hus­band, for
whom she lacked any sex­u­al desire, she was pas­sion­ate and reck­less in her
love affairs. But the affairs always end­ed in a sim­i­lar way: In the mid­dle of
a love­mak­ing ses­sion, she would sud­den­ly become ter­ri­fied and curl up into
a ball, whim­per­ing like a lit­tle girl. These scenes left her con­fused and
dis­gust­ed, and after­ward she could not bear to have any­thing more to do
with her lover.
Like Mar­i­lyn in chap­ter 8, Joan told me that she had learned to make
her­self dis­ap­pear when she was being molest­ed, float­ing above the scene as
if it were hap­pen­ing to some oth­er girl. Push­ing the molesta­tion out of her
mind had enabled Joan to have a nor­mal school life of sleep­overs,
girl­friends, and team sports. The trou­ble began in ado­les­cence, when she
devel­oped her pat­tern of frigid con­tempt for boys who treat­ed her well and
hav­ing casu­al sex that left her humil­i­at­ed and ashamed. She told me that
bulim­ia for her was what orgasms must be for oth­er peo­ple, and hav­ing sex
with her hus­band for her was what vom­it­ing must be for oth­ers. While
spe­cif­ic mem­o­ries of her abuse were split off (dis­so­ci­at­ed), she unwit­ting­ly
kept reen­act­ing it.
I did not try to explain to her why she felt so angry, guilty, or shut down
—she already thought of her­self as dam­aged goods. In ther­a­py, as in
mem­o­ry pro­cess­ing, pendulation—the grad­ual approach that I dis­cussed in
chap­ter 13—is cen­tral. For Joan to be able to deal with her mis­ery and hurt,
we would have to recruit her own strength and self-love, enabling her to
heal her­self.
This meant focus­ing on her many inner resources and remind­ing myself
that I could not pro­vide her with the love and car­ing she had missed as a
child. If, as a ther­a­pist, teacher, or men­tor, you try to fill the holes of ear­ly
depri­va­tion, you come up against the fact that you are the wrong per­son, at
the wrong time, in the wrong place. The ther­a­py would focus on Joan’s
rela­tion­ship with her parts rather than with me.
MEETING THE MANAGERS
As Joan’s treat­ment pro­gressed, we iden­ti­fied many dif­fer­ent parts that were
in charge at dif­fer­ent times: an aggres­sive child­like part that threw tantrums,
a promis­cu­ous ado­les­cent part, a sui­ci­dal part, an obses­sive man­ag­er, a
pris­sy moral­ist, and so on. As usu­al, we met the man­agers first. Their job
was to pre­vent humil­i­a­tion and aban­don­ment and to keep her orga­nized and
safe. Some man­agers may be aggres­sive, like Joan’s crit­ic, while oth­ers are
per­fec­tion­is­tic or reserved, care­ful not to draw too much atten­tion to
them­selves. They may tell us to turn a blind eye to what is going on and
keep us pas­sive to avoid risk. Inter­nal man­agers also con­trol how much
access we have to emo­tions, so that the self-sys­tem doesn’t get
over­whelmed.
It requires an enor­mous amount of ener­gy to keep the sys­tem under
con­trol. A sin­gle flir­ta­tious com­ment may trig­ger sev­er­al parts
simul­ta­ne­ous­ly: one that becomes intense­ly sex­u­al­ly aroused, anoth­er filled
with self-loathing, a third that tries to calm things down by self-cut­ting.
Oth­er man­agers cre­ate obses­sions and dis­trac­tions or deny real­i­ty
alto­geth­er. But each part should be approached as an inter­nal pro­tec­tor who
main­tains an impor­tant defen­sive posi­tion. Man­agers car­ry huge bur­dens of
respon­si­bil­i­ty and usu­al­ly are in over their heads.
Some man­agers are extreme­ly com­pe­tent. Many of my patients hold
respon­si­ble posi­tions, do out­stand­ing pro­fes­sion­al jobs, and can be superbly
atten­tive par­ents. Joan’s crit­i­cal man­ag­er undoubt­ed­ly con­tributed to her
suc­cess as an oph­thal­mol­o­gist. I have had numer­ous patients who were
high­ly skilled teach­ers or nurs­es. While their col­leagues may have
expe­ri­enced them as a bit dis­tant or reserved, they would prob­a­bly have
been aston­ished to dis­cov­er that their exem­plary cowork­ers engaged in self-
muti­la­tion, eat­ing dis­or­ders, or bizarre sex­u­al prac­tices.
Grad­u­al­ly Joan start­ed to real­ize that it is nor­mal to simul­ta­ne­ous­ly
expe­ri­ence con­flict­ing feel­ings or thoughts, which gave her more
con­fi­dence to face the task ahead. Instead of believ­ing that hate con­sumed
her entire being, she learned that only a part of her felt par­a­lyzed by it.
How­ev­er, after a neg­a­tive eval­u­a­tion at work Joan went into a tail­spin,
berat­ing her­self for not pro­tect­ing her­self, then feel­ing clingy, weak, and
pow­er­less. When I asked her to see where that pow­er­less part was locat­ed
in her body and how she felt toward it, she resist­ed. She told me she
couldn’t stand that whiny, incom­pe­tent girl who made her feel embar­rassed
and con­temp­tu­ous of her­self. I sus­pect­ed that this part held much of the
mem­o­ry of her abuse, and I decid­ed not to pres­sure her at this point. She
left my office with­drawn and upset.
The next day she raid­ed the refrig­er­a­tor and then spent hours vom­it­ing
up her food. When she returned to my office, she told me she want­ed to kill
her­self and was sur­prised that I seemed gen­uine­ly curi­ous and
non­judg­men­tal and that I did not con­demn her for either her bulim­ia or her
sui­ci­dal­i­ty. When I asked her what parts were involved, the crit­ic came back
and blurt­ed out, “She is dis­gust­ing.” When she asked that part to step back,
the next part said: “Nobody will ever love me,” fol­lowed again by the crit­ic,
who told me that the best way to help her would be to ignore all that noise
and to increase her med­ica­tions.
Clear­ly, in their desire to pro­tect her injured parts, these man­agers were
unin­ten­tion­al­ly doing her harm. So I kept ask­ing them what they thought
would hap­pen if they stepped back. Joan answered: “Peo­ple will hate me”
and “I will be all alone and out in the street.” This was fol­lowed by a
mem­o­ry: Her moth­er had told her that if she dis­obeyed, she would be put up
for adop­tion and nev­er see her sis­ters or her dog again. When I asked her
how she felt about that scared girl inside, she cried and said that she felt bad
for her. Now her Self was back, and I was con­fi­dent that we had calmed the
sys­tem down, but this ses­sion turned out to be too much too soon.
PUTTING OUT THE FLAMES
The fol­low­ing week Joan missed her appoint­ment. We had trig­gered her
exiles, and her fire­fight­ers went on a ram­page. As she told me lat­er, the
evening after we talked about her ter­ror of being put into fos­ter care, she
felt as if she were going to blast out of her­self. She went to a bar and picked
up a guy. Com­ing home late, drunk, and disheveled, she refused to talk to
her hus­band and fell asleep in the den. The next morn­ing she act­ed as if
noth­ing had hap­pened.
Fire­fight­ers will do any­thing to make emo­tion­al pain go away. Aside
from shar­ing the task of keep­ing the exiles locked up, they are the oppo­site
of man­agers: Man­agers are all about stay­ing in con­trol, while fire­fight­ers
will destroy the house in order to extin­guish the fire. The strug­gle between
uptight man­agers and out-of-con­trol fire­fight­ers will con­tin­ue until the
exiles, which car­ry the bur­den of the trau­ma, are allowed to come home and
be cared for.
Any­one who deals with sur­vivors will encounter those fire­fight­ers. I’ve
met fire­fight­ers who shop, drink, play com­put­er games addic­tive­ly, have
impul­sive affairs, or exer­cise com­pul­sive­ly. A sor­did encounter can blunt
the abused child’s hor­ror and shame, if only for a cou­ple of hours.
It is crit­i­cal to remem­ber that, at their core, fire­fight­ers are also
des­per­ate­ly try­ing to pro­tect the sys­tem. Unlike man­agers, who are usu­al­ly
super­fi­cial­ly coop­er­a­tive dur­ing ther­a­py, fire­fight­ers don’t hold back: They
hurl insults and storm out of the room. Fire­fight­ers are fran­tic, and if you
ask them what would hap­pen if they stopped doing their job, you dis­cov­er
that they believe the exiled feel­ings would crash the entire self-sys­tem.
They are also obliv­i­ous to the idea that there are bet­ter ways to guar­an­tee
phys­i­cal and emo­tion­al safe­ty, and even if behav­iors like binge­ing or
cut­ting stop, fire­fight­ers often find oth­er meth­ods of self-harm. These
cycles will come to an end only when the Self is able to take charge and the
sys­tem feels safe.
THE BURDEN OF TOXICITY
Exiles are the tox­ic waste dump of the sys­tem. Because they hold the
mem­o­ries, sen­sa­tions, beliefs, and emo­tions asso­ci­at­ed with trau­ma, it is
haz­ardous to release them. They con­tain the “Oh, my God, I’m done for”
experience—the essence of inescapable shock—and with it, ter­ror, col­lapse,
and accom­mo­da­tion. Exiles may reveal them­selves in the form of crush­ing
phys­i­cal sen­sa­tions or extreme numb­ing, and they offend both the
rea­son­able­ness of the man­agers and the brava­do of the fire­fight­ers.
Like most incest sur­vivors, Joan hat­ed her exiles, par­tic­u­lar­ly the lit­tle
girl who had respond­ed to her abuser’s sex­u­al demands and the ter­ri­fied
child who whim­pered alone in her bed. When exiles over­whelm man­agers,
they take us over—we are noth­ing but that reject­ed, weak, unloved, and
aban­doned child. The Self becomes “blend­ed” with the exiles, and every
pos­si­ble alter­na­tive for our life is eclipsed. Then, as Schwartz points out,
“We see our­selves, and the world, through their eyes and believe it is ‘the’
world. In this state it won’t occur to us that we have been hijacked.”17
Keep­ing the exiles locked up, how­ev­er, stamps out not only mem­o­ries
and emo­tions but also the parts that hold them—the parts that were hurt the
most by the trau­ma. In Schwartz’s words: “Usu­al­ly those are your most
sen­si­tive, cre­ative, inti­ma­cy-lov­ing, live­ly, play­ful and inno­cent parts. By
exil­ing them when they get hurt, they suf­fer a dou­ble whammy—the insult
of your rejec­tion is added to their orig­i­nal injury.”18 As Joan dis­cov­ered,
keep­ing the exiles hid­den and despised was con­demn­ing her to a life
with­out inti­ma­cy or gen­uine joy.
UNLOCKING THE PAST
Sev­er­al months into Joan’s treat­ment we again accessed the exiled girl who
car­ried the humil­i­a­tion, con­fu­sion, and shame of Joan’s molesta­tion. By
then she had come to trust me enough and had devel­oped enough sense of
Self to be able to tol­er­ate observ­ing her­self as a child, with all her long-
buried feel­ings of ter­ror, excite­ment, sur­ren­der, and com­plic­i­ty. She did not
say very much dur­ing this process, and my main job was to keep her in a
state of calm self-obser­va­tion. She often had the impulse to pull away in
dis­gust and hor­ror, leav­ing this unac­cept­able child alone in her mis­ery. At
these points I asked her pro­tec­tors to step back so that she could keep
lis­ten­ing to what her lit­tle girl want­ed her to know.
Final­ly, with my encour­age­ment, she was able to rush into the scene
and take the girl away with her to a safe place. She firm­ly told her abuser
that she would nev­er let him get close to her again. Instead of deny­ing the
child, she played an active role in lib­er­at­ing her. As in EMDR the res­o­lu­tion
of the trau­ma was the result of her abil­i­ty to access her imag­i­na­tion and
rework the scenes in which she had become frozen so long ago. Help­less
pas­siv­i­ty was replaced by deter­mined Self-led action.
Once Joan start­ed to own her impuls­es and behav­iors, she rec­og­nized
the empti­ness of her rela­tion­ship with her hus­band, Bri­an, and began to
insist on change. I invit­ed her to ask Bri­an to meet with us, and she was
present for eight ses­sions before he began to see me indi­vid­u­al­ly.
Schwartz observes that IFS can help fam­i­ly mem­bers “men­tor” each
oth­er as they learn to observe how one person’s parts inter­act with
another’s. I wit­nessed this first­hand with Joan and Bri­an. Bri­an was ini­tial­ly
quite proud of hav­ing put up with Joan’s behav­ior for so long; feel­ing that
she real­ly need­ed him had kept him from even con­sid­er­ing divorce. But
now that she want­ed more inti­ma­cy, he felt pres­sured and inad­e­quate—
reveal­ing a pan­icked part that blanked out and put up a wall against feel­ing.
Grad­u­al­ly Bri­an began to talk about grow­ing up in an alco­holic fam­i­ly
where behav­iors like Joan’s were com­mon and large­ly ignored, punc­tu­at­ed
by his father’s stays in detox cen­ters and his mother’s long hos­pi­tal­iza­tions
for depres­sion and sui­cide attempts. When I asked his pan­icked part what
would hap­pen if it allowed Bri­an to feel any­thing, he revealed his fear of
being over­whelmed by pain—the pain of his child­hood added to the pain of
his rela­tion­ship with Joan.
Over the next few weeks oth­er parts emerged. First came a pro­tec­tor
that was fright­ened of women and deter­mined nev­er to let Bri­an become
vul­ner­a­ble to their manip­u­la­tions. Then we dis­cov­ered a strong care­tak­er
part that had looked after his moth­er and his younger sib­lings. This part
gave Bri­an a feel­ing of self-worth and pur­pose and a way of deal­ing with
his own ter­ror. Final­ly, Bri­an was ready to meet his exile, the scared,
essen­tial­ly moth­er­less child who’d had no one to care for him.
This is a very short ver­sion of a long explo­ration, which involved many
diver­sions, as when Joan’s crit­ic reemerged from time to time. But from the
begin­ning IFS helped Joan and Bri­an hear them­selves and each oth­er from
the per­spec­tive of an objec­tive, curi­ous, and com­pas­sion­ate Self. They were
no longer locked in the past, and a whole range of new pos­si­bil­i­ties opened
up for them.
THE POWER OF SELF-COMPASSION: IFS IN THE
TREATMENT OF RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS
Nan­cy Shadick is a rheuma­tol­o­gist at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s
Hos­pi­tal who com­bines med­ical research on rheuma­toid arthri­tis (RA) with
a strong inter­est in her patients’ per­son­al expe­ri­ence of their ill­ness. When
she dis­cov­ered IFS at a work­shop with Richard Schwartz, she decid­ed to
incor­po­rate the ther­a­py into a study of psy­choso­cial inter­ven­tion with RA
patients.
RA is an autoim­mune dis­ease that caus­es inflam­ma­to­ry dis­or­ders
through­out the body, caus­ing chron­ic pain and dis­abil­i­ty. Med­ica­tion can
delay its progress and relieve some of the pain, but there is no cure, and
liv­ing with RA can lead to depres­sion, anx­i­ety, iso­la­tion, and over­all
impaired qual­i­ty of life. I fol­lowed this study with par­tic­u­lar inter­est
because of the link I’d observed between trau­ma and autoim­mune dis­ease.
Work­ing with senior IFS ther­a­pist Nan­cy Sow­ell, Dr. Shadick cre­at­ed a
nine-month ran­dom­ized study in which one group of RA patients would
receive both group and indi­vid­ual instruc­tion in IFS while a con­trol group
received reg­u­lar mail­ings and phone calls regard­ing dis­ease symp­toms and
man­age­ment. Both groups con­tin­ued with their reg­u­lar med­ica­tions, and
they were assessed peri­od­i­cal­ly by rheuma­tol­o­gists who were not informed
which group they belonged to.
The goal of the IFS group was to teach patients how to accept and
under­stand their inevitable fear, hope­less­ness, and anger and to treat those
feel­ings as mem­bers of their own “inter­nal fam­i­ly.” They would learn the
inner dia­logue skills that would enable them to rec­og­nize their pain,
iden­ti­fy the accom­pa­ny­ing thoughts and emo­tions, and then approach these
inter­nal states with inter­est and com­pas­sion.
A basic prob­lem emerged ear­ly. Like so many trau­ma sur­vivors, the RA
patients were alex­ithymic. As Nan­cy Sow­ell lat­er told me, they nev­er
com­plained about their pain or dis­abil­i­ty unless they were total­ly
over­whelmed. Asked how they were feel­ing, they almost always replied,
“I’m fine.” Their sto­ic parts clear­ly helped them cope, but these man­agers
also kept them in a state of denial. Some shut out their bod­i­ly sen­sa­tions
and emo­tions to the extent that they could not col­lab­o­rate effec­tive­ly with
their doc­tors.
To get things mov­ing, the lead­ers intro­duced the IFS parts dra­mat­i­cal­ly,
rear­rang­ing fur­ni­ture and props to rep­re­sent man­agers, exiles, and
fire­fight­ers. Over the course of sev­er­al weeks, group mem­bers began to talk
about the man­agers who told them to “grin and bear it” because no one
want­ed to hear about their pain any­way. Then, as they asked the sto­ic parts
to step back, they start­ed to acknowl­edge the angry part that want­ed to yell
and wreak hav­oc, the part that want­ed stay in bed all the time, and the exile
who felt worth­less because she wasn’t allowed to talk. It emerged that, as
chil­dren, near­ly all of them were sup­posed to be seen and not heard—safety
meant keep­ing their needs under wraps.
Indi­vid­ual IFS ther­a­py helped patients apply the lan­guage of parts to
dai­ly issues. For exam­ple, one woman felt trapped by con­flicts at her job,
where a man­ag­er part insist­ed the only way out was to over­work until her
RA flared up. With the therapist’s help she real­ized that she could care for
her needs with­out mak­ing her­self sick.
The two groups, IFS and con­trols, were eval­u­at­ed three times dur­ing
the nine-month study peri­od and then again one year lat­er. At the end of
nine months, the IFS group showed mea­sur­able improve­ments in self-
assessed joint pain, phys­i­cal func­tion, self-com­pas­sion, and over­all pain
rel­a­tive to the edu­ca­tion group. They also showed sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments
in depres­sion and self-effi­ca­cy. The IFS group’s gains in pain per­cep­tion
and depres­sive symp­toms were sus­tained one year lat­er, although objec­tive
med­ical tests could no longer detect mea­sur­able improve­ments in pain or
func­tion. In oth­er words, what had changed most was the patients’ abil­i­ty to
live with their dis­ease. In their con­clu­sions, Shadick and Sow­ell
empha­sized IFS’s focus on self-com­pas­sion as a key fac­tor.
This was not the first study to show that psy­cho­log­i­cal inter­ven­tions
can help RA patients. Cog­ni­tive behav­ioral ther­a­pies and mind­ful­ness-
based prac­tices have also been shown to have a pos­i­tive impact on pain,
joint inflam­ma­tion, phys­i­cal dis­abil­i­ty, and depression.19 How­ev­er, none of
these stud­ies has asked a cru­cial ques­tion: Are increased psy­cho­log­i­cal
safe­ty and com­fort reflect­ed in a bet­ter-func­tion­ing immune sys­tem?
LIBERATING THE EXILED CHILD
Peter ran an oncol­o­gy ser­vice at a pres­ti­gious aca­d­e­m­ic med­ical cen­ter that
was con­sis­tent­ly rat­ed as one of the best in the coun­try. As he sat in my
office, in per­fect phys­i­cal shape because of his reg­u­lar squash prac­tice, his
con­fi­dence had crossed the line into arro­gance. This man cer­tain­ly did not
seem to suf­fer from PTSD. He told me he just want­ed to know how he
could help his wife to be less “touchy.” She had threat­ened to leave him
unless he did some­thing about what she termed his cal­lous behav­ior. Peter
assured me that her per­cep­tion was warped, because he obvi­ous­ly had no
prob­lem being empath­ic with sick peo­ple.
He loved talk­ing about his work, proud of the fact that res­i­dents and
fel­lows com­pet­ed fierce­ly to be on his ser­vice and also of scut­tle­butt he’d
heard about his staff being ter­ri­fied of him. He described him­self as bru­tal­ly
hon­est, a real sci­en­tist, some­one who just looked at the facts and—with a
mean­ing­ful glance in my direction—did not suf­fer fools glad­ly. He had high
stan­dards, but no high­er than he had for him­self, and he assured me that he
didn’t need anybody’s love, just their respect.
Peter also told me that his psy­chi­a­try rota­tion in med school had
con­vinced him that psy­chi­a­trists still prac­ticed witch­craft, and his one stint
in cou­ples’ ther­a­py had fur­ther con­firmed that opin­ion. He expressed
con­tempt for peo­ple who blamed their par­ents or soci­ety for their prob­lems.
Even though he had had his own share of mis­ery as a child, he was
deter­mined nev­er to think of him­self as a vic­tim.
While Peter’s tough­ness and his love for pre­ci­sion appealed to me, I
could not help but won­der if we would dis­cov­er some­thing I’d seen all too
often: that inter­nal man­agers who are obsessed with pow­er are usu­al­ly
cre­at­ed as a bul­wark against feel­ing help­less.
When I asked him about his fam­i­ly, Peter told me that his father ran a
man­u­fac­tur­ing busi­ness. He was a Holo­caust sur­vivor who could be bru­tal
and exact­ing, but he also had a ten­der and sen­ti­men­tal side that had kept
Peter con­nect­ed with him and that had inspired Peter to become a physi­cian.
As he told me about his moth­er, he real­ized for the first time that she had
sub­sti­tut­ed rig­or­ous house­keep­ing for gen­uine care, but Peter denied that
this both­ered him. He went to school and got straight As. He had vowed to
build a life free of rejec­tion and humil­i­a­tion, but, iron­i­cal­ly, he lived with
death and rejec­tion every day—death on the oncol­o­gy ward and the
con­stant strug­gle to get his research fund­ed and pub­lished.
Peter’s wife joined us for the next meet­ing. She described how he
crit­i­cized her incessantly—her taste in clothes, her child-rear­ing prac­tices,
her read­ing habits, her intel­li­gence, her friends. He was rarely at home and
nev­er emo­tion­al­ly avail­able. Because he had so many impor­tant oblig­a­tions,
and because he was so explo­sive, his fam­i­ly always tip­toed around him. She
was deter­mined to leave him and start a new life unless he made some
rad­i­cal changes. At that point, for the first time, I saw Peter become
obvi­ous­ly dis­tressed. He assured me and his wife that he want­ed to work
things out.
At our next ses­sion I asked him to let his body relax, close his eyes,
focus his atten­tion inside, and ask that crit­i­cal part—the one his wife had
identified—what it was afraid would hap­pen if he stopped his ruth­less
judg­ing. After about thir­ty sec­onds he said he felt stu­pid talk­ing to him­self.
He didn’t want to try some new age gimmick—he’d come to me look­ing for
“empir­i­cal­ly ver­i­fied ther­a­py.” I assured him that, like him, I was at the
fore­front of empir­i­cal­ly based ther­a­pies and that this was one of them. He
was silent for per­haps a minute before he whis­pered: “I would get hurt.” I
urged him to ask the crit­ic what that meant. Still with his eyes closed, Peter
replied: “If you crit­i­cize oth­ers, they don’t dare to hurt you.” Then: “If you
are per­fect, nobody can crit­i­cize you.” I asked him to thank his crit­ic for
pro­tect­ing him against hurt and humil­i­a­tion, and as he became silent again,
I could see his shoul­ders relax and his breath­ing become slow­er and deep­er.
He next told me that he was aware that his pom­pos­i­ty was affect­ing his
rela­tion­ships with his col­leagues and stu­dents; he felt lone­ly and despised
dur­ing staff meet­ings and uncom­fort­able at hos­pi­tal par­ties. When I asked
him if he want­ed to change the way that angry part threat­ened peo­ple, he
replied that he did. I then asked him where it was locat­ed in his body, and
he found it in the mid­dle of his chest. Keep­ing his focus inside, I asked him
how he felt toward it. He said it made him scared.
Next I asked him to stay focused on it and see how he felt toward it
now. He said he was curi­ous to know more about it. I asked him how old it
was. He said about sev­en. I asked him to have his crit­ic show him what he
pro­tect­ed. After a lengthy silence, still with his eyes closed, he told me that
he was wit­ness­ing a scene from his child­hood. His father was beat­ing a
lit­tle boy, him, and he was stand­ing to one side think­ing how stu­pid that kid
was to pro­voke his dad. When I asked him how he felt about the boy who
was get­ting hurt, he told me that he despised him. He was a weak­ling and a
whin­er; after show­ing even the least bit of defi­ance to his dad’s high-
hand­ed ways, he inevitably capit­u­lat­ed and whim­pered that he would be a
good lit­tle boy. He had no guts, no fire in his bel­ly. I asked the crit­ic if he
would be will­ing to step aside so we could see what was going on with that
boy. In response the crit­ic appeared in full force and called him names like
“wimp” and “sis­sy.” I asked Peter again if the crit­ic would be will­ing to step
aside and give the boy a chance to speak. He shut down com­plete­ly and left
the ses­sion say­ing that he was unlike­ly ever to set foot in my office again.
But the fol­low­ing week he was back: As she had threat­ened, his wife
had gone to a lawyer and filed for divorce. He was dev­as­tat­ed and no longer
looked any­thing like the per­fect­ly put-togeth­er doc­tor whom I’d come to
know and, in many ways, dread. Faced with the loss of his fam­i­ly, he
became unhinged and felt com­fort­ed by the idea that if things got too bad
he could take his life in his own hands.
We went inside again and iden­ti­fied the part that was ter­ri­fied of
aban­don­ment. Once he was in his mind­ful Self-state, I urged him to ask that
ter­ri­fied boy to show him the bur­dens he was car­ry­ing. Again, his first
reac­tion was dis­gust at the boy’s weak­ness, but after I asked him to get that
part to step back, he saw an image of him­self as a young boy in his par­ents’
house, alone in his room, scream­ing in ter­ror. Peter watched this scene for
sev­er­al min­utes, weep­ing silent­ly through much of it. I asked him if the boy
had told him every­thing he want­ed him to know. No, there were oth­er
scenes, like run­ning to embrace his father at the door and get­ting slapped
for hav­ing dis­obeyed his moth­er.
From time to time he would inter­rupt the process by explain­ing why his
par­ents couldn’t have done any bet­ter than they had, their being Holo­caust
sur­vivors and all that implied. Again I sug­gest­ed he find the pro­tec­tive parts
that were inter­rupt­ing the wit­ness­ing of the boy’s pain and request that they
move tem­porar­i­ly to anoth­er room. And each time he was able to return to
his grief.
I asked Peter to tell the boy that he now under­stood how bad the
expe­ri­ence had been. He sat in a long, sad silence. Then I asked him to
show the boy that he cared about him. After some coax­ing he put his arms
around the boy. I was sur­prised that this seem­ing­ly harsh and cal­lous man
knew exact­ly how to take care of him.