From belonging to belonging
I feel like life is living through us. Our body/being is the vessel for unfoldings that come from deep springs within.
It feels so much better than living from our head, deciding, choosing, determining, and “making things happen.” Life is coming from the bottom, not the top. It’s flowing through. We’re becoming more invisible all the time.
Today we’re joyfully, calmly bringing forth what is within us — out flows the website www.deepmagicgroup.com. I had to edit the last sentence to articulate the feeling of how it rises up and manifests itself without effort. I started writing, “As we work on,” but that wasn’t accurate. There’s no “working” or “doing,” it’s — unfolding. Discovering and allowing to arise.
I feel patient and spacious, not rushed or stressed. I feel supported by life.
I feel deeply committed to following this feeling, allowing it to deepen, and forming an alliance with it. This energy IS Self-energy. It’s the Tao, the universe unfolding as and through us.
I feel more sure of myself. I feel that this way has its own inner confirmation of rightness — it FEELS right. It FEELS.
As Daemonic on Twitter recently posted, it is a “felt shift” in my body that confirms I am in alignment with myself and the universe.
I feel the antenna of my consciousness growing stronger, able to hold more resonance, able to reach out and connect to those who are on the same frequency, and also more lovingly clear that MY specific resonance, this energy, is NOT a match for everyone and that’s okay!
I feel more at peace with simply being as I am, with the faith that those who resonate are my people, and those who do not resonate are the people of other tribes, other communities, in a world of literally millions upon millions of communities.
We are all doing our best to find our way home, to discover deep within ourselves OUR frequency, and then to stop seeking, stop looking, STOP, and simply receive the gift of who we are.
As we settle into a deep, rich self-acceptance and self-knowing, all the striving to be Cinderella’s step-sisters who cram big toes into a glass shoe that doesn’t fit — all that effort to FIT in, instead of FINDING out where we deeply belong — all that misguided contortion and self-betrayal can magically dissolve away.
Beech trees rise tall in forests of other papery-barked beeches; maples gurgle and flow with sugar inside, among the rich sap of their brethren maples; pines soar up, up, up goaded on by their peers, merrily throwing off pine-cones for hundreds of yards around. Every tree has its tree-brothers and sisters, and an oak is not diminished because it can’t ‘fit in’ with the elms.
May we all be deeply nourished by the knowledge of who we are.
May we give ourselves permission to know the difference between where we merely fit in, and where we truly belong.
May we move from love to love, from belonging to belonging, into arms that welcome and celebrate us as we move throughout our days.
—p
The Shear, Hilarious Joy of Making Mistakes
In the spring of 2020, lockdown descended upon Chicago. A beautiful April unfolded outside, with an eery quiet as traffic died down and birds were easier to hear.
In isolation, I determined to cut my hair on my own to send in for an overdue hair tissue mineral analysis. My managerial parts wanted to cut as close to the scalp as I could, so it would be ‘as accurate as possible!’
I spent a long time brushing, sectioning, and clipping up the hair on the back of my head. I already had my fancy, HTMA-only scissors ready. I parsed and parsed my hair until I had identified just the right area. Then I started cutting, close— as close to the scalp as I could get—
Suddenly I stopped. Something felt ‘off.’ I saw the hair on the floor. WHOAH Nelly! I’d sheared off about a four by two inch section of hair on the back of my head! WAY too much hair.
Then I started laughing. Oh my god I had a bald spot! Luckily all my sectioning and pinning and clipping prior to the cut meant the bald spot was underneath the clipped-up hair, so as long as I brushed my hair right, no one could see it.
Reaching for “perfect,” for “accurate,” my managers over-reached, over-cut, and basically scalped me. Happily my managers are not particularly invested in how other people perceive me, and my firefighters only care about very specific things (like acne, which they can NOT abide). So without protectors wrapped up in using how I appear as a strong defense, I had room to laugh. And laugh some more.
When I look at that picture I laugh so hard!
I appreciate the freedom to laugh at myself. To make mistakes. To screw up. To sit on the floor with my hair clipped up in the beginning of a global pandemic, trying to cut my hair myself, and failing miserably.
I wasn’t aiming for a “#coronacut,” but I definitely got one.
Here’s to the joy of making mistakes. To this one, and all the ones to come!
Shock. Relationship injury. Now what?
Left alone with double the pain…or accompanied in the fire, through the process of rupture and repair?
In 2016, I was sitting in a circle at a training, feeling safe and connected to the group.
Out of the blue, an off-color joke was made. The room erupted in laughter, but I was frozen.
Shocked.
I spoke up for my parts: “I wouldn’t feel comfortable if that was said to me." Four years later, I understand that the comment was made in the space I occupied, and it was enough that it felt unsafe for me; I didn’t have to make a distinction between it being made to someone else or to me, because my parts took it in and that’s what matters.
The hardest thing about this experience is that I was alone in it. The rest of the people in the room apparently didn’t have a problem with an off-color sexist joke being made in the training room. Although two other women privately told me they agreed with me, they weren’t able to speak up in the larger group to support me.
Being alone with something that doesn’t feel right, that’s shocking, that pulls the rug out from underneath — it doubles the pain of the original injury.
The aloneness of being shocked in a safe space is something I’ve experienced many times. Thinking back to this particular experience, I connect viscerally to how raw I felt, how excruciating the pain was for my parts, and how vulnerable I was, having trusted the group and opened myself to it.
Because I know how extremely painful it is to be alone in a shocking situation, one of my top priorities is to stay present if I ever do something that shocks or causes harm.
The coaching relationship is a sacred, safe space. My highest priority is to honor that safety. And yet — there are times I may say or do something that doesn’t feel quite right, whether it’s a small miss or a big one. My goal is to always be available to repair those misses, with no statute of limitations. It may be, “that question doesn’t resonate but what I’m noticing is…” and it’s a simple redirection. Or it may be that something felt off in the session, but it wasn’t clear at the time, and that clarity only came later. However it unfolds, I commit to being available to getting to the absolute bottom of it and making the repair that needs to be made. Even if it means seeing a place in myself that was a blind spot, I’m absolutely committed to doing the work on myself that it takes to repair any misses.
If there is a rupture in our coaching relationship, I dedicate myself to SHOW UP and not leave anyone ALONE with that rupture. I want to stand in the fire, and commit to a “no abandonment” policy after a rupture — because being abandoned after an injury doubles the pain. Knowing exactly how excoriating it is to be injured, and then alone with the injury, I want to do everything I can to stay, stay, stay with whatever impact arises.
That is my commitment, to honor the sacred nature of deep inner work, and to stay in the fire. It’s messy work, and sometimes there will be misses. Relationships, by definition, entail rupture and repair. By staying and walking through the miss to the repair, we learn that it’s possible to stay — stay with our own pain, stay with ourselves, stay with each other — and reach the other side, the repair. The reconnection. The re-attunement. All worthy things to learn.
Helping the Helpers: The Importance of Unblending from Managers
As an IFS facilitator, one of my main roles is to be relaxed in the process as it unfolds, knowing it is unfolding just fine, even if you have managers who are impatient, or managers who want to get to the exiles, or managers who want to heal more quickly, or managers who are concerned the work is not proceeding correctly.
It is okay to feel impatient! It is okay to want to get to the exiles! It is okay to want to heal more quickly! And it is okay to be concerned the work is not proceeding quickly or correctly! My role is to have the confidence to engage directly with your managers and help them receive SUPPORT for their discomfort, impatience, burnout and distress. My role is to stay in a place of profound peace with both your managers and MY managers who sometimes get alarmed that I’m not making your managers happy! Because my job is not to make your managers happy, my job is to help you unblend from your managers to allow Self energy to emerge, so that Self can address the manager’s concerns with honesty and respect.
I have four boxes of parts: a small one of exiles, a medium one of firefighters, and two large boxes of managers. In this culture most people have double the number of managers than other parts. So it makes sense it takes time to address their concerns, fears, judgements, criticisms, and polarizations.
I notice more and more that people who are committed to doing their inner work face the difficulty of accepting that we MUST PARTNER WITH the managers to do the work, not be BLENDED WITH the managers who want to do the work. The work can not be done by managers. They do not have the training or capacity to do it. Therefore they have to accept stepping back and allowing Self energy to do it. That is HARD WORK on the part of hard-working managers.
My pilates teacher tells me I need to use my core muscles, not my surface muscles, to do pilates. “What are my surface muscles supposed to do then?!” She replies, “They need to aggressively DO NOTHING.” It’s the same in IFS — the managers need to flex and build the muscle of self-restraint, of actively, aggressively NOT DOING in order to allow the Self to do what it needs to do.
The managers need to give up their position of leadership and turn it over to Self energy. Giving up their seat of power is not easy: it is difficult and takes work, trust and relationship building with the Self. So a lot of the work WILL BE unblending from the managers. It takes time. It is tough on the managers, who feel impatient, who criticize that it needs to be done, who try to think their way out of it, and who are not used to being vulnerable and being the ones who actually need some support and help instead of being the helpers.
What is the "key" to IFS work? Perhaps the bees know...
In a way, doing IFS inner work is like doing surgery. We are going inside, in order to heal and transform burdens that have lodged somewhere in consciousness. It’s delicate work that demands not only care and precision, but also confidence. You wouldn’t want a surgeon who is overly cautious, who isn’t sure of the right way to handle an unexpected issue that arises during a brain operation, and you wouldn’t want an IFS practitioner who is unsure of how to proceed either!
When energy is stuck — when there are chronic habits that don’t change, or procrastination, or self-criticism, or difficulty making wanted changes — it makes sense that our more driven parts, our ‘managers,’ want change and want it NOW.
Managers who WANT change are ultimately great allies in the journey. When they are on board, they bring focus, resources and energy to the table. AND, when they are impatient, they need support. Many managers are extremely tired of how hard they have to work to function in a system that is carrying heavy, unresolved emotional burdens. These managers become burned out and overwhelmed that change has not taken place or takes place at a snail’s pace.
Starting IFS work can therefore be both hopeful and painful for managers: hopeful because they see the possibility of some relief, but painful because the work almost ALWAYS proceeds more slowly than they want it to.
Inner work can only proceed at a pace that is safe for all parts. Managers do not get to set the pace. Exiles, and the SYSTEM of parts as a whole, set the pace. The resulting pain of impatience is something the managers need support with. But it can be hard to help them receive support, because they are so used to being the leader of the personality; they are so used to “blending” with the client and “being” WHO the client thinks she is. They may say, “What do you mean, wanting to heal is just a part of me, it’s not “me”? Isn’t wanting to heal important?!”
Yes, it is important, AND it is possible for parts to want healthy things, but to want them with such impatience, such intensity, and such compulsion, that the WAY they want them isn’t healthy.
All parts are impacted by, and carry pain, as a result of the emotional burdens that are stuck in consciousness. That pain CAN be unburdened, CAN be unstuck, but only by the power of Self-energy — the calm, compassionate center of consciousness, not the tense, “fix-it-now” determination of the managers.
Therefore, the more the managers can unblend, the sooner they will actually get what they want. To do so they must learn to accept help so they can relinquish their position at the seat of consciousness and make way for Self-energy to occupy that central position. This takes time and energy; it’s a relationship-building project between the managers and the Self-energy. Which, of course, can be maddening for managers who have learned that the exiles are the “key” to unburdening the personality— “Why are you wasting time on me when we need to get to those exiles and heal them?!”
So let’s set something right: exiles are not “the key” to unburdening, any more than a bee is “the key” to honey. To make honey you need bees, yes, but you need flowers, you need a bee hive, you need summer (winter doesn’t cut it), and you need a community all working in harmony. In the same way, to transform consciousness, to unburden emotional burdens, it takes an inner village. Honey making takes place at the pace of the bee hive community; unburdening takes place at the pace of the ENTIRE inner IFS community. It takes all parts — firefighters, managers, exiles — and Self together to make it happen. One lone bee does not a pot of honey make. One lone exile cut off from all other parts does not a transformed person make.
Also, a bee hive needs a queen in the center the way a person needs Self-energy in the center; a manager on the queen’s throne will not run a bee hive correctly.
Therefore, one of the important elements of IFS work IS the work with managers, to help them give up their place as the Self and to give it back, slowly, slowly, slowly, to the Self. This is a grief process because they really ARE giving up a seat of power, and accepting their limitations, and accepting and grieving how hard it has been to HAVE TO do the job of the Self. What a thankless situation in a way — the managers stepped up to lead the personality, to do a job no one else was doing, and they did it the best they could. Then they got used to having that position, and now they are being asked to relinquish it. That’s a lot of inner work for them to process. Over time, as they get to know the Self energy, they can trust the Self to lead.
Regardless of how managers feel about the Self’s capability to lead in day-to-day life, for sure, inner work can not be led BY managers. Gung-ho managers who want to “get to those exiles and heal them” will not succeed. This “fix ‘em quick” attitude, needless to say, does not make sensitive, exiled parts feel welcomed and loved. It makes them feel like problems to be solved and items on a checklist to be checked off. So what do the exiles do? They check out and refuse to participate if that is how they are going to be treated. Or they take in even more burdens of shame that they are “broken” and “defective.” In this way, the manager’s impatience actually ADDS to the burdens of pain and worthlessness that need to be healed. It’s a negatively reinforcing loop that doesn’t get anyone — managers, exiles or clients — closer to where they want to be.
Practitioners I highly recommend
Chicago
Pilates studio — Pilates Chicago
Skokie
Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine — Joseph Mitchell
Large free directory of holistic practitioners
The Next Step
After accomplishing a piece of deep emotional work, the next step is integrating it.
Some people journal. Some sketch; some mind map; some jot down a few notes, or enter information into specialized systems they use to keep track of their parts. Others share key insights verbally with friends, or email about them.
But many people do nothing. The work is done; the emotions raw; the inner shifts nascent and tender. The inner world will integrate in its own ways, invisibly, regardless of conscious attempts to capture or categorize the process. In other words, integration will happen with or without extra effort.
Yes, and…extra effort may result in extra results.
As a result of doing extra integrating, extra results can both move you further forward, and keep you from falling further back.
Extra results = One Step Forward, Half a Step Back
Due to the holistic nature of consciousness/personality, almost any piece of inner work you do will result in far-ranging consequences which disrupt the established order in your inner world. No matter what issue you address, from a minor wisp of guilt to a cataclysmic trauma, inner work always shifts your inner political and cultural landscape, which means some parts will have a vested interest in opposing whatever insights occur. Therefore, these parts may attempt to erase, forget, or go fuzzy about exactly what happened in the session. Did you really decide to start standing up for yourself in that oppressive situation? No…surely that wasn't quite what happened…
Extra integrating prevents 'forgetting' by vested interests opposed to the insights you achieved. We all take a step forward and then slide backwards a bit as we progress along our paths. Extra integrating helps change the equation from "one step forward, two steps back," to something more like "one step forward, half a step back."
How Can Extra Integrating Help You Move Forwards?
In addition to staving off steeper slides backwards, extra integrating can propel you forwards. In IFS, continuity is a powerful agent of change. Instead of coming to an IFS session and randomly shooting the breeze about what came up during the week, we dig in to root structures in our personality. Thus, we keep working with our most common parts week after week; we get to know them; we develop deeper and deeper relationships. Sure, sessions often start with 'clearing the air' and discussing things that came up during the week, but this leads to parts that we then touch into on a deeper, felt level. Whether we work with our parts in brief encounters, or more sustained journeys, every time we truly meet and experience a distinct part of ourselves, we are genuinely engaging with ourselves at a deeper level.
*Note: I am talking about removing BURDENS, which are painful feelings and beliefs, NOT parts of ourselves. In IFS we don't 'get rid of' parts; we help parts 'get rid of' their burdens. So the dandelions in this metaphor are NOT parts of ourselves!
In IFS, transformation at the core is the goal, not a simple surface treatment. In the same way that to truly make progress on getting rid of dandelions in your yard, you have to go back numerous times and dig them up by the roots, so it is with our emotional burdens.*
Mowing the lawn will keep the seeds from spreading for a while, but eventually the dandelions return. Sure, it's possible to deal with dandelions by just mowing over them every week. But taking the time to pull them out altogether, while tougher work, yields more lasting results.
red star shaped flowers in a garden
Extra integrating helps you keep track of where in the yard of your inner world you're working, so you can easily pick right up where you left off from session to session, instead of wandering around in the uncharted wilderness of your mind, scratching your head, saying, "Hmm, was this what I was working on?" while factions opposed to exactly that eagerly pipe up and say, "No, no, not at all," throwing you further off track.
Extra integrating is simply making a record or a map of the inner work you do. It's probably as tough to make it a habit, as it is rewarding. But what would it be like to just keep pushing into that tough dirt, and eventually get that habit to grow? I think you'd eventually grow a tree bearing ripe fruits to nourish your inner journey for years to come.