So I have been partaking in Internal Family Systems therapy with my longtime therapist for the last few months. I'm so glad she went to a conference and we began this new journey. It is awkward, and uncomfortable but throwing me for a loop in the best possible way. The theory is that we have parts of our personalities that sprang forward to take care of us since we were children (and continue today). Life happened to us and we were overwhelmed and protective parts arose. These parts are very connected to our woundings.
My most active protectors are anxiety, sadness and eating. I know judgment and shame are in the mix but I don't know how they show up. We begin by seeing which part is showing up in my body at the present time and then we kindly, compassionately, talk to the part and there is always another one waiting in the wings. I have chest pain that appears as anxiety, I have sensation that starts in my chin and leads to my eyes for sadness. My therapist tenderly asks questions like how do I feel about the anxiety? Can sadness go to a a safe spot and let us talk to anxiety? Does it know Adult Carolyn is here? What age do you remember this showing up? Whatever the parts want to do, is okay and met with gratitude and compassion. With each question, we are teaching the wounded parts that there is an adult core (Self) of confidence, compassion, acceptance, calmness, wisdom, connectedness, and leadership that is in place and is ready to take over. We are synthesizing the protective wounded parts with the core Self.
And guess what that core self is?!
God.
The Divine One.
One That I Want to Get to Know!
IFS therapy at this time in my life amazingly builds on other theories and spirituality that I have been exploring for years. One of my favorite therapist teachers, Mary O'Malley, has advocated for curiosity, compassion and kindness with ourselves. This stands out to stark contrast with the judgement and shame that I have heaped upon myself for decades. The religion of my youth added to the self-criticism. God was not a loving being, but a judging Santa Claus in the sky, whom I needed to be saved through Jesus in order not to be punished to Hell.
I didn't want to get to know that God. Who would want that?
The judging Santa Claus with a side of Jesus was the message I received and took to heart and it has taken two decades and counting to begin to rewire and transform my image of God.
My life along with this therapy is a spiritual journey of being in the present moment, and for me to know God is inside each and every one of us. The love of the Divine One is unconditional, and the Trinity. Oh the trinity! I continue to heal with the Father, Son and HOLY SPIRIT in the mix. There is a Divine Flow which has been around from the very beginning of creation of the World. (Thank you Father Richard Rohr!) This flow when I can rest in it, makes me feel connected to the entirety of creation, humans, plants, animals and includes those with whom I utterly politically disagree in our current most divided world. You know that's some powerful stuff.
It takes a long time to unlearn what was learned from the very beginning of our lives. Spirituality is really about unlearning. One of my biggest teachers is emotions.
Emotions overwhelm me (as they did in extreme form in Postpartum Depression). If I don't identify with them, attach to them, become them, they flow through. (Different flow though!!)
I know this mechanism well but I lose sight of it and then I remember again, and then I forget. In my most recent therapy session earlier this week, I very unexpectedly was taken back to the postpartum depression I had with my first child. In past sessions, I have gone back and forth between sensations of anxiety and sadness in mere seconds. In the last session, holding those two emotions this time, seemingly "out of nowhere," my mind went to my first postpartum experience. I had fallen into a deep pit of despair, and volleyed back and forth between grief and overwhelming anxiety. I hit bottom one night after months of struggling, when I finally started an anti-depressant. That night, it ramped my anxiety up even further. I did not sleep at all, and my overwhelming fear was that I needed to be carted off to a hospital and that my baby needed to be taken away. The memory of this night and the postpartum depression, is still present in my body and I can call up the depth of the fear, isolation and utter despair easily.
I felt so utterly alone and abandoned.
My therapist and I address the Postpartum Depression experience lovingly and carefully during this session. I attempt to recognize that my adult self is present. When I answer the age question, it seems like I'm a teenager. When finished, she tells me the Postpartum Depression is likely related to feelings of abandonment from early on. She told me to take special care of myself. For days afterward, I felt the aftereffects of examining these parts in the form of mental exhaustion, irritability and sadness. I felt blah, I really wanted comfort. Not so long ago, my therapist and I had discussed looking at anxiety head on and not avoiding it. I was having chest pains, with the pandemic and my daughters going back to school. My therapist would ask, how do I feel about the anxiety? I began to feel edgy towards her which I have never done. I'm freaking terrified, of a heart attack right now is how I feel. After the session, I did a little research into heart attacks, because you know, I had too(!) and as I had gone through cardiac testing before, I knew the chest pain was anxiety. I sat with that knowledge and when I began to feel the anxiety again, I thanked it for working to take care of me, for showing up and that Adult Carolyn had this.
And the chest pain went away.
I know it will come again, and I will forget but ultimately, I plant to practice gratitude, kindness and compassion towards the anxiety over and over.
So, here I was again, days after exploring postpartum in my last session. I don't like it, I want to escape it and I want it to GO AWAY. I talk to a friend. I look things up on the internet. Somehow I come across this video of Glennon Doyle. It is a 23 minute Master Class in being with the pain while laughing. She comes on very strong, but hold on for the ride.
She gets my pain. She is saying this stuff out loud and people respond to her. I respond to this.
She and Pema Chodron both say: "If you can sit with the hot loneliness of pain for 1.6 seconds, when yesterday you could only sit for 1 second, that is the Journey of the Warrior."
Glennon continues: "When we transport ourselves out of our hot loneliness, we miss our transformation. And everything we need to become ourselves is in that hot loneliness".... "the pain teaches us what we need to know."
This is spirituality like I never knew before whereas the judging God of my youth would never evolve to knowing how much I'm loved, how I am at one with the entire universe and knowing the peace that surpasses all understanding.
With the hot pain, also comes joy. When you numb pain, you also numb everything else.
So this crazy therapy is deep, deep spirituality at it's core and coming to know God and myself in ways I never ever dreamed of.
Namaste.
Here is the Oprah's Super Soul Conversation featuring Glennon Doyle Melton.
