Self-Therapy (Kindle highlights)

The human mind isn’t a unitary thing that sometimes has irrational feelings. It is a complex system of interacting parts, each with a mind of its own. It’s like an internal family--with wounded children, impulsive teenagers, rigid adults, hypercritical parents, caring friends, nurturing relatives, and so on. That’s why this new therapy approach is called Internal Family Systems Therapy. (p. 3)
Real change rarely comes from intellectual insight alone. (p. 5)
When we have problems in life, IFS doesn’t see us as having a disease or deficit. It recognizes that we have the resources within us to solve our problems, though these resources may be blocked because of unconscious reactions to events in the past. (p. 7)
Any feeling reaction, thought sequence, behavior pattern, or body sensation can indicate the presence of a part. (p. 10)
Every part has a positive intent for you. It may want to protect you from harm or help you feel good about yourself. It may want to keep you from feeling pain or make other people like you. Every part of you is trying to help you feel good and avoid pain. (p. 11)
Despite their best intentions, these parts don’t always act wisely; they take extreme stances or behave in clumsy and primitive ways. (p. 11)
It distorted the present based on the past. (p. 11)
In IFS, we do something altogether different and radical. We welcome all our parts with curiosity and compassion. We seek to understand each one and appreciate its efforts to help us, without losing sight of the ways it is causing problems. We develop a relationship of caring and trust with each part, and then take steps to heal it so it can function in a healthy way. (p. 12)
Parts are entities of their own, with their own feelings, beliefs, motivations, and memories. (p. 20)
Since parts are like little people inside you, you can make contact with them, get to know them, negotiate with them, encourage them to trust you, help them communicate with each other, and give them what they need to heal. (p. 20)
IFS focuses on parts that play extreme roles in order to heal and transform them, which is what you will learn to do in this book. There are two kinds of extreme parts—protectors and exiles. (p. 22)
Exiles are young child parts that are in pain from the past. While protectors try to keep us from feeling pain, exiles are the parts in pain. They are the ones the protectors are trying to protect us from. (p. 25)
In addition to painful emotions, exiles have negative beliefs about you and about the world. (p. 26)
Because exiles hold pain from your past, they are pushed away by protectors. They are exiled from your inner life and kept in dark dungeons away from the light of consciousness. (p. 26)
Whenever something happens in the present that is similar, it reactivates that pain, which comes bubbling up toward the surface. Then your protectors go into high gear to prevent you from having to feel it. (p. 26)
We all have a core part of us that is our true self, our spiritual center. When our extreme parts are not activated and in the way, this is who we are. The Self is relaxed, open, and accepting of yourself and others. When you are in Self, you are grounded, centered, and non-reactive. You don’t get triggered by what people do. You remain calm and unruffled, even in difficult circumstances. (p. 29)
The Self is connected. (p. 30)
The Self is curious. (p. 30)
The Self is compassionate. (p. 30)
The Self is calm, centered, and grounded. (p. 30)
For all these reasons, the Self is the agent of psychological healing in IFS work. It helps you to heal and transform your parts so they become free of their extreme feelings and behavior, and can assume healthy roles in your life. (p. 31)
The Self is the conductor of the orchestra. (p. 31)
There are two goals for IFS therapy: one, heal your parts so that their extreme roles are converted to healthy roles, and two, help them to cooperate with each other under the leadership of the Self. (p. 32)
As a result of childhood incidents, our exiles take on pain and negative beliefs, which, in IFS, are called burdens. (p. 34)
A trailhead is an experience or a difficulty in your life that will lead to interesting parts if you follow it. (p. 54)
You have three options for going about this: Start with a part you already know about and access it. Access all the parts activated at the current moment and then choose one to focus on. Start with a trailhead. Analyze it to see what parts are related to it and then choose one to access. Or access all the parts related to the trailhead experientially and then choose one. (p. 70)
A part is blended with you and has taken over your seat of consciousness when any of the following is true. (p. 77)
You are flooded with the part’s emotions to such a degree that you aren’t grounded. You are lost in those feelings. (p. 77)
You are caught up in the beliefs of the part so that you lose perspective on the situation. You see the world through the distorted perception of the part. (p. 77)
You don’t feel enough of your Self. (p. 78)
You don’t need to be one-hundred percent in Self to work successfully with a part; you need to have a critical mass of Self available. You need just enough Self that you have a place to stand separate from the part. (p. 81)
To work with a part successfully, it is best if the part is activated but not too blended with you. (p. 81)
What you are feeling toward the part? Not what the part is feeling, but what you are feeling toward it, as if it were sitting in front of you. (p. 82)
If you receive a clear answer to this question, the part probably isn’t blended with you. (p. 82)
You can’t have a relationship with a part if there is only one of you. So you are asking the part to separate enough that you have a place to stand from which to connect with it. (p. 83)
Sometimes a part won’t separate from you because it is afraid you will do something unwise if it does. (p. 83)
Just having this more extended conversation with a part helps to create separation. (p. 84)
Many people use a meditation like this in order to start every session in Self. (p. 85)
This is a second form of unblending—where you separate from parts that feel negatively toward your target part. (p. 92)
This means we need to be genuinely open to getting to know each part from a curious and compassionate place, which will encourage it to reveal itself. (p. 93)
I will call this the concerned part because it has concerns about the target part. It is fearful or worried about what kinds of problems that part will cause. (p. 94)
A concerned part is a part that has a negative feeling toward the target part, or any feeling other than those of the Self (curiosity, compassion, and so on). Concerned parts are aware of the ways that the target part is causing trouble in your life. They may be concerned that it alienates you from people, for example, or makes you feel worthless or cuts off your emotions. (p. 95)
The target part wants to protect you from pain in its way, and the concerned part wants to protect you from the pain caused by the target part’s extreme behavior. (p. 96)
I have now presented two classifications of parts—protector and exile, target part and concerned part. Let me clarify. Parts are intrinsically either protectors or exiles, depending on whether they are in pain or protecting against pain. Either one of these can also be a target part. That simply means you have chosen to focus on it. And any protector can also be a concerned part if it has concerns about your target part. (p. 96)
For example, if Sheila’s Judge agrees to step aside, she may now feel openly curious about what drives the Temper Tantrum part. (p. 98)
Protectors believe they must perform their roles to prevent you from being harmed, even if this inadvertently gets you in serious trouble. Knowing this will help you to understand and have compassion for them—and ultimately to transform them. (p. 112)
It is best to have your eyes closed and be free of distractions for this work and, in fact, for the entire IFS session. This allows you to feel your body, see images, and hear internal dialogue more clearly. (p. 114)
Sometimes the name of a part will change over time as you get to know it better, just like the image. Allow this to happen. (p. 119)
The most potent question is: “What are you afraid would happen if you didn’t perform your role?” (p. 119)
Whenever you are ending a session, it is a good idea to take a moment to connect respectfully with the parts you have worked with and bring closure to the work. It’s like saying good-bye to a friend at the end of a visit. (p. 127)
So far you have learned how to access a protector and find out about it. It isn’t enough to just gain information and insight; you must develop a real relationship with a protector. A crucial part of your success in IFS depends on the degree to which you are connected with each protector so that it trusts you. (p. 132)
In reality, most protectors are child parts that developed their protective strategy when you were young and didn’t have the capacity to act in skillful and mature ways. So their actions are simplistic and often extreme like a child’s, and their strategies carry over into adulthood. When a protector is faced with a situation that it perceives as threatening, it will act the only way it knows how, using the tactic it learned in childhood, which is usually dysfunctional in your adult life. (p. 133)
This is a common dynamic. A protective strategy that worked well and was appropriate in childhood is carried over into adult situations, where it is completely outmoded. (p. 134)
In IFS, healing exiles is a central aspect of the work, but it is important not to rush it. Don’t say, “Oh, here’s a protector. Just move aside please, and let me access the important part, the exile.” Take the time to develop a relationship with each of your protectors. (p. 135)
Honor the part for trying to help you. (p. 135)
Check to see if you understand and appreciate the protector’s efforts on your behalf, even if its actions cause problems. If you don’t feel appreciation, this might stem from your not understanding the protector’s positive intent. (p. 137)
The reason for their restricted vision is that many parts are much more narrow and one dimensional than a whole person is. They have a limited understanding of both the external situation confronting them and your internal system. When triggered, they tend to respond in stereotypical ways, and they’re not particularly sophisticated or intelligent. Not all parts are like this, however. Some can be quite clever and subtle, but most of them are pretty shortsighted. (p. 139)
A crucial first step is to find out exactly what it doesn’t trust in you. (p. 148)
Our goal during a session is to stay on track while still being open to any parts that arise. (p. 157)
There are six common types of protectors that can derail your work—judgmental parts, avoiders, intellectualizers, impatient parts, inadequate parts, and skeptics. (p. 158)
Once you realize that you are blended with a Judgmental Part, ask it to step aside so you can get to know the target part from an open place. (p. 160)
Here is another common occurrence. You begin to feel impatient with your IFS session; without warning, you want to stop and attend to other things in your life. (p. 160)
Normally these thoughts or stimuli wouldn’t grab your attention, but the Avoidant Part latches onto them as a way of preventing you from going through with the work. This part is using distraction as a means of avoidance. (p. 160)
Keep in mind that it really isn’t possible to do the IFS process badly. (p. 161)
When you are getting to know a protector, it is common to think you are in Self when in fact an Intellectualizer Part has taken over. One sign of this is that you analyze the target part rather than asking questions and listening for its responses. (p. 162)
Skepticism can be very useful if it is applied at the right time. At the wrong time, it will derail the process. (p. 166)
It can be useful to access all parts as they arise, because this gives them a chance to be heard, but in the scenario I outlined above, the parts jumped in on each other so fast that none of them really got much attention. And you couldn’t progress toward healing because you kept getting derailed. IFS provides a way to follow one thread at a time through the tapestry of your psyche until you have unraveled it and healed the part it represents. Plan to stay with the target part you have chosen unless you have a good reason to switch to a different target part. Ask the other parts to step aside. (p. 170)
Be judicious in your choice to change target parts. Be careful that you don’t switch parts in order to avoid something painful or frightening. (p. 172)
There is no intellectual way to distinguish one part from another. It’s simply intuitive. (p. 172)
In IFS, we want to welcome all our parts, but we don’t want to be overwhelmed by them. A good way to handle this is to slow down, take a deep breath, and feel your belly and legs. This will help to ground you. Then take your time and pay attention to one emotion (and therefore one part) at a time. (p. 173)
We don’t waste time trying to induce the protector to change. We simply ask permission to work with the exile it is guarding and then move on to healing that child part. (p. 176)
A central principle in IFS is: We don’t work with an exile until we have permission from any protectors that might object. (p. 179)
Sometimes the emotions of the exile come up while you are working with the protector. (p. 180)
Sometimes you get an image of the exile behind or below the image of the protector, or you see their relationship in some other way. (p. 180)
You can ask the protector what it is afraid would happen if it didn’t perform its role. This answer frequently points toward the exile because the reason the protector is there is to guard the exile. (p. 180)
Sometimes one protector looks out for several exiles, or several protectors all guard a single exile. (p. 180)
There is a powerful advantage to understanding that there are two parts involved. Though the protector is keeping you from the pain, it may not realize that there is an exile that is already feeling the pain. It may think it is actually preventing the pain from existing at all rather than preventing you from feeling what the exile is already experiencing. (p. 181)
Some protectors say that you will be flooded or overwhelmed by the exile’s pain. (p. 182)
Normally, we flip back and forth between two extremes. Either we are caught in an exile’s pain or we are closed off behind a protector’s defenses. (p. 182)
IFS does something quite different from either of these options. It helps you to work with the exile from the safe vantage point of Self. (p. 182)
The protector says that if it allows you to heal the exile, it will no longer have a role to play in your psyche and therefore will lose power or disappear. This seems like death, and it doesn’t want this to happen. Parts tend to resist being eliminated; they don’t want to die. (p. 183)
You can explain to the protector that if it lets you heal the exile and its current role becomes unnecessary, it doesn’t have to go away. It can choose a new role in your psyche. A part isn’t defined by its role or job. (p. 184)
For example, an Intellectualizer whose job has been to avoid emotions might choose to be a philosopher who contemplates the meaning of life. (p. 184)
For example, it is afraid of activating a protector that would fly into a rage or go on a drinking binge. It might not be wrong; this is sometimes a real possibility. There are extreme protectors, and in IFS they are called firefighters. They jump in impulsively to douse the fire of an exile’s pain when it is starting to come up. They have no concern for the possible destructive consequences of their actions. They just want to stop the pain at any cost. (p. 186)
However, sometimes protectors pop up later. While you are working with the exile, if a protector feels threatened by the pain that is coming up from the exile, it may reactivate to block that pain. You may get sleepy or distracted. You may go into your head or get angry. (p. 189)
Most of the time, we don’t notice the exile because exiles are pushed out of consciousness. If we notice anything, it is the behavior of the protector because it is the protectors that control our behavior. (p. 198)
To summarize: In most situations that trigger us, at least two parts are involved. The exile is usually triggered first and then the protector, which pops up to guard it. However, the protector may pop up so quickly that we don’t notice the exile at all. In fact, that is usually the protector’s mission—to prevent us from feeling the pain of the exile. (p. 198)
When you are exploring an issue, it always involves an exile, either directly or indirectly. (p. 198)
IFS has discovered a way to explore an exile’s pain safely. You stay in Self and relate to the exile; you don’t become the exile. If you merged with the exile and lost contact with the Self, the pain really could be overwhelming. (p. 200)
Explain to the exile that you will be able to hear his story and help him if you remain in Self. You are not asking the exile to block his feelings; you aren’t suggesting that he shouldn’t feel his emotions. You are simply asking him to keep those feelings separate from you so you can be in a solid place to help. This is one of the most powerful innovations of the IFS method. (p. 201)
The goal is to feel very close to the exile emotionally while still remaining separate. (p. 202)
Experiencing the exile’s pain in this way means that you are simultaneously in Self and consciously blended with the exile. The exile is showing you her emotion by having you feel it. That is fine as long as you can tolerate this experience and you remain centered and able to be there for the exile, and as long as this doesn’t trigger any protectors. (p. 204)
Most of the time, exiles don’t need us to take on their pain; witnessing is enough. (p. 205)
If you are feeling judgmental, angry, or scared of the exile, or if you want it to go away, you aren’t in Self. You are blended with a concerned part. (p. 205)
The protector might feel judgmental towards the exile because she is scared or insecure or weak, or just because she is too emotional. These judgments usually mirror the attitudes your parents had toward you when you were young, since protectors sometimes model themselves after your parents. (p. 206)
It isn’t enough to be curious and open with an exile the way you would with a protector because compassion is vitally necessary for healing an exile’s suffering. (p. 206)
Empathy is a way of resonating with another person’s feelings (or with an exile’s feelings). Compassion is a feeling of loving kindness toward someone (or an exile) in pain. Empathy often leads to compassion; you resonate with someone’s pain, which stimulates your compassion for him or her. Therefore, the two often occur together. However, it is important to understand how they are different, especially in relating to your exiles. (p. 206)
They were injured when young, and then they were dismissed by us because we couldn’t handle their pain. So they have been in eternal exile. (p. 207)
Exiles want to be heard; they want to have their pain witnessed and understood. (p. 210)
One of the major forces behind our psychological issues is the pain we carry from childhood. The IFS perspective on this is that our exiles carry burdens. A burden is a painful feeling or negative belief about yourself or the world—for example, abandonment, worthlessness, fear of being hit, or shame. An exile ends up carrying a burden into the present because a harmful incident or relationship from the past, usually from childhood, was not metabolized. (p. 217)
Whenever you endure a painful or difficult experience, it must be fully processed and metabolized for your psyche to stay healthy. You must fully feel the experience, make sense of it, and integrate it into your notion of who you are in a way that doesn’t leave you with a negative, inaccurate view of yourself. Even experiences in adult life must be metabolized in this way. (p. 219)
As a child, you often don’t have the resources to metabolize difficult incidents. You can’t do it on your own, so you need a great deal of sensitive support from your parents or other adults. The more painful and traumatic an experience, the more you need support to be able to metabolize it. And this support often isn’t available, either because your parents don’t realize you need it or because they don’t have the capacity to provide it. Or, worst of all, because your parents were the source of the traumatic incident. (p. 220)
Though you may believe that implicit memories aren’t important, they can be just as useful for healing as explicit ones. When one arises, witness it and encourage the exile to let you know more about it. Just be open and interested. (p. 222)
The exile might also show you a symbolic memory, which is an image that represents in symbolic form something that happened to you, just as a dream can signify something psychological. (p. 223)
There are two primary aspects to any memory—what happened and how that made the exile feel. Make sure she shows you both, if possible. (p. 223)
While a protector might use anger as a way to defend against deeper pain, exiles often carry anger as well. An exile’s anger isn’t a defense and needs to be fully witnessed. (p. 224)
If you have a purely intellectual understanding of the memory, that probably won’t lead to healing. The memory must be opened up emotionally and intellectually so it is both felt and understood. (p. 225)
The exile understands that the burden she is carrying is from the past and not intrinsic to her. (p. 226)
When something harmful or traumatic happens to you as a child, an exile takes on the pain, and a protector often takes on the role of stopping the pain. Its goal is to keep the incident from happening again or to stop you from being overwhelmed by the pain. The protector’s role is its burden, in contrast to the exile, whose burden is the pain (or negative belief). It is important to note that not all protectors take on their jobs at the time of a childhood trauma; some do it later in life. (p. 227)
Instead of getting to know the exile first and then asking for the memory, you can ask the protector for the memory directly. You do this in the same way you would with an exile. (p. 227)
Our parts take on burdens because of painful or traumatic experiences in childhood that we can’t metabolize at the time. We can’t change those experiences; they have already happened. However, we can change their effect on us. It isn’t the experiences themselves that determine how we feel and behave in our adult lives; it is the residue of those experiences in our psyches, which IFS refers to as burdens. Your current issues are caused by the way your psyche was structured by your childhood to hold certain beliefs, body tensions, and emotions. So while you can’t change the past, you can change the way the past is codified in your mind. (p. 235)
Here is how you reparent the exile: In your imagination, you join the exile in that original childhood situation. (p. 236)
Be with the exile in the way she needed someone to be with her then. She may need understanding, caring, support, approval, protection from harm, encouragement, or love. Sense what she needs from you in that situation to heal her and redress what happened. (p. 236)
The reparenting process actually lays down new neural pathways in the brain. That is why your psyche and your life can change so dramatically. You give that child part a new experience of some aspect of your childhood, an experience that heals or replaces the old one. (p. 236)
Reparenting can’t be faked. You must genuinely feel love or caring or respect for the exile. You must really feel like giving her what she needs. (p. 238)
An inner child becomes satisfied fairly easily with just a little attention every day. It doesn’t take much time at all. (p. 239)
Even though we obviously don’t want to act that way in the real world, sometimes violent fantasies can help an exile to feel stronger and more fully protected. (p. 239)
Whatever the exile needs, your goal is to arrange it for her. And this may mean altering the incident, reworking it so it happens exactly the way the exile needs, the way that will be most healing for her. (p. 239)
Whatever the exile needs, your goal is to arrange it for her. And this may mean altering the incident, reworking it so it happens exactly the way the exile needs, the way that will be most healing for her. This doesn’t mean that you will forget what really happened, but your psyche will be restructured so that the new experience has the primary influence on the way you feel and behave in the present. (p. 239)
This will lay down new “memories,” new neural connections that will free the exile from the burdens of the past and allow you to feel better about yourself in the present. (p. 240)
So far I have been talking about the original childhood situation as if it involved a parent or parents. However, it can revolve around your brother or sister, or the entire family. It might involve an aunt, uncle, or grandparent. It might even be about the bullies on the playground. That original situation could be an incident in your adult life in which you suffered trauma. (If you’re sent to Iraq, for example, you very well might end up with new burdens.) No matter who was involved or when it happened, the principles remain the same. Act in whatever way the exile needs to rework the situation for the better. Make it come out in a way that lays down a new memory that is healing and freeing for the exile. (p. 240)
At the end of the session, ask the exile what she wants from you over the next week or two. Most likely, she will say that she wants you not to forget about her, to stay connected with her. This is very important. Check in with her every day over the next couple of weeks. Make a note to yourself to do this so that you don’t forget. If you do, it could undermine the good work you have just done. (p. 251)
The burden is not intrinsic to the exile; that’s why it can be released. The IFS perspective is that the exile itself wasn’t created by the childhood incident—the burden was. (p. 253)
The part that experiences the traumatic incident in place of the Self can’t really handle it either, and it ends up wounded. It is left with a burden, a painful emotion or negative belief that tends to persist until it is healed. (p. 254)
By the time you reach adulthood, you will have a number of exiles, quite a few protectors, and some parts that haven’t taken on burdens—the healthy parts. They simply manifest their original qualities of joy, playfulness, strength, intelligence, and so on. The goal of IFS is to help all the exiles and protectors—all the burdened parts—release their loads so they can again become who they truly are and manifest their natural positive qualities. (p. 255)
Sometimes inner work can’t go further until you make external changes in your life, even though this might be difficult. (p. 257)
It is particularly meaningful to release a burden to one of the natural elements (air, light, water, fire, or earth), because that signifies that the burden is being carried away or transformed by something elemental and powerful, and therefore is permanently gone. (p. 258)
Allow as much time as needed for this ritual to be completed until all of these particular burdens are completely gone from the exile’s body or as much is gone as can be released at this time. In my experience, this usually takes only a few minutes. (p. 258)
At this point, you may be wondering: “Can it really be this easy to change a long-standing pattern of behavior or feeling? I can’t believe that all you have to do is have a fantasy of letting go of the pain. It can’t be that easy.” And, of course, it’s not. The unburdening ritual doesn’t achieve transformation all by itself; it only caps off the process. All the previous steps in the process are necessary and must be completed before the unburdening ritual will have the desired effect. (p. 260)
"Can it really be this this easy to change a long-standing pattern of behavior or feeling? I can’t believe that all you have to do is have a fantasy of letting go of the pain. It can’t be that easy." And, of course, it’s not. The unburdening ritual doesn’t achieve transformation all by itself; it only caps off the process. All the previous steps in the process are necessary and must be completed before the unburdening ritual will have the desired effect. You must work with the protector(s) to obtain unimpeded access to the exile. You must develop a trusting connection with the exile and witness the original childhood incident. She must feel understood by you. You must reparent her and, if necessary, retrieve her. And the exile must be ready to release the burden. Only after all this has been accomplished can the unburdening ritual work. This ritual is really the culmination of this entire sequence of steps; it solidifies the whole IFS transformation process. (p. 260)
At this point, you may be wondering: “Can it really be this easy to change a long-standing pattern of behavior or feeling? I can’t believe that all you have to do is have a fantasy of letting go of the pain. It can’t be that easy.” And, of course, it’s not. The unburdening ritual doesn’t achieve transformation all by itself; it only caps off the process. All the previous steps in the process are necessary and must be completed before the unburdening ritual will have the desired effect. You must work with the protector(s) to obtain unimpeded access to the exile. You must develop a trusting connection with the exile and witness the original childhood incident. She must feel understood by you. You must reparent her and, if necessary, retrieve her. And the exile must be ready to release the burden. Only after all this has been accomplished can the unburdening ritual work. This ritual is really the culmination of this entire sequence of steps; it solidifies the whole IFS transformation process. (p. 260)
Since the protector views its role as crucial in guarding the vulnerable exile or defending you from the exile’s pain, the protector must be aware of the exile’s transformation before it can let go of its role. (p. 268)
Sometimes explorers don’t recognize which type of part they are working with. (p. 292)
Before you start a session, be clear about what part or trailhead you want to focus on, and make a written note about this. (p. 295)
It can be helpful to do your work out loud, as if you were speaking to someone. That makes it similar to working with a partner and serves to keep you focused. You can even go a step further and record your sessions. This will not only help you stay focused, but the recordings can be played back for additional learning. (p. 295)
Another possibility is to do the session in writing. (p. 295)
Use the Help Sheet to keep you attuned to where you are in the process. After you complete each step, briefly open your eyes and check the Help Sheet to see what to do next. (p. 295)
Another way to arrange self-direction is to have a “therapist part” that facilitates your session. (p. 296)
In these situations, if you really listen inside, you will hear arguments going on between different parts of you. Even experiences like depression, anxiety, and low self-esteem, which at first glance don’t look like inner conflict, are often rooted in polarization. (p. 304)
Polarized parts are often locked in an unending struggle that causes intense emotions and counterproductive behavior. Usually, both polarized parts are protectors that are guarding exiles, and sometimes they are even protecting the same exile using opposite strategies. (p. 304)
With IFS, you get to know each polarized part and develop a trusting relationship with it, just as you would with any protector. This helps you to realize that you don’t want to get rid of either side because each of them has something to offer and each is trying its best to help you. (p. 304)
Since an Inner Critic part is a protector, it is actually trying to help you, as surprising as that may seem. This makes it possible to connect with a Critic from Self rather than fighting it, and this helps it to let go of its judgments. (p. 305)
We have discovered that you can develop an aspect of your Self that we call the Inner Champion, which supports and encourages you. (p. 305)
This allows us to see that the basis of all inner activity is love. It becomes an even more profound practice when we apply it to other people and their parts. Suppose we understood that everyone’s parts are just doing their best to protect against pain, and this is true even for those people and nations that are causing horrible suffering in the world. This challenges our judgmental and separating attitudes and encourages us to experience our inherent connection with all people and all beings. It doesn’t blind us to destructive and hateful actions, but it does open our hearts to compassion, loving kindness, and universal love. (p. 308)
For example, though you perform a certain meditation to cultivate loving kindness, you must also transform your judgmental protector so that you can actually relate to people in a loving way. You may feel loving kindness when you are in comfortable, unthreatening circumstances, but if someone dismisses you or attacks you, the judgmental protector will be triggered, interfering with your intention to be kind. To fully liberate loving kindness, you must help the judgmental protector to let go of its role (which usually means first unburdening the exile that is being protected). Once this has happened, you can fully reap the fruits of your meditation practice. Loving kindness can manifest naturally at those moments in your life when it is needed because nothing is in the way. (p. 309)