Welcoming the healer within

This week I would like to focus on the ways that we can tap into the healer within us & some of the techniques that I love to use in Embody Loving You Holistic Therapies.

At times we can feel lost within the tangle of fear or self-doubt, overcome by our web of overthinking. Too often we feel overwhelmed by the need to be there for everyone else & constrained by the cold walls of perfectionism.  But inside, just waiting to be tapped into, listened to, witnessed & held is our inner self, our inner knowledge – the healer within.

Too often we may have lost touch with the healer within us. We may have never really learned her language; we may have never really dared to believe that such a one could exist, but this healer is there withing all of us & what I want most for you is that you feel empowered to release the healer within.

I want you to grow in your capacity to feel true connection with yourself in all of your glory – to be able to embrace your magnificence & your flaws in equal measure & to feel peaceful gratitude & acceptance for all of you.

I want you to have at your fingertips a range of tools that can help you to rebalance yourself mind, body & soul so when you notice that you are of kilter & out of sorts you can pause, check in & decide what you need right now to restore your equilibrium.

One of my favourite tools that can help us understand & learn to hold ourselves through anxiety & imposter syndrome is Internal Family Systems, a theory that says we have different parts inside us - like a family within - & we can feel very out of sorts when these parts are not able to work harmoniously together.

Now people can feel a bit edgy with the idea that we have different parts within us & may think that this is something like having a split personality, but the idea is so beautifully simple & feeling confident with using IFS to reach greater self-understanding can be profoundly healing.

IFS says that we have an overarching Self that’s like a guide or a parent & we also have other parts where we tend to want to park all of our difficult emotions, feelings & behaviours. Because these parts can be choked up with all our uncomfortable stuff, they can feel awkward, uncomfortable & even shockingly painful.

I find this is such a holistic way to understand & learn how to build a healing relationship with anxiety & imposter syndrome & all the uncomfortable feelings they bring up.

We tend to have 3 parts that hold all of our awkward stuff & it’s helpful to think of these as like unsettled & distressed children that are in urgent need some love, kindness & parental support. This is because very often we first parked our uncomfortable stuff when we were kids – the anxiety when we started school & were afraid we’d never make friends; the shame when our peers laughed when we made a mistake in class; the anger & frustration when our parents or teachers asked us to do stuff that seemed pointless or perhaps the terrible times if we were abused, assaulted or humiliated. All the stuff that felt too hot & raw to touch at the time gets parked with our parts.

The first of these inner child parts is known as our Exiles. As the name implies, this is the space where we to push all of our most awful uncomfortable feelings; the ones that felt so awful at the time that we felt that they must be shut out, so we never touch their burning pain again.

Now we as humans are designed to survive & so to stop us feeling this terrible way again IFS says we also develop what are known as Protector parts & these parts are there to keep us away from those scary Exile parts by behaving in certain ways whenever we sense the risk of those awful exile feelings looming on the horizon.

Our Protector parts have just one role in life – to keep us safe from the awful overwhelming excruciating feelings - & they take their role very seriously. They are however not experts – we developed them when we are kids.  so they have a child’s eye view of what to do & how to cope.

Some of the behaviours of our Protector parts are more socially acceptable than others but all are rather inefficient & they all end up letting in slivers of the original distress.

The more socially accepted Protector parts are our Manager parts.

This is where our overwhelmingly distressing feelings around anxiety & imposter syndrome can show up as overworking & perfectionism. We know we are in this Manager mode when we have to work to the point of burn-out & we cannot ever risk even the hint of imperfection because of the awful exiled raw shame that is hovering on the horizon.

Now this type of behaviour can be popular with bosses & even our family & friends who know they can rely on us to consistently overdeliver & overperform. So often our bosses our family & our friends have either no idea or worse no interest in the terrible fear that is driving our compulsive overworking. We ourselves can also be completely unaware that a lot of the time we are being driven by our Manager parts because we are getting lots of hits of praise that makes the daily exhaustion feel tolerable & so much easier to ignore.

Our other Protectors parts are known as our Firefighters & have behaviours are a lot less socially acceptable, but their sole focus is literally putting out the excruciating fire - dowsing the distressing feelings in something that will literally stamp out our capacity to feel the awful feeling.

These behaviours may include drinking & substance abuse & binging be that food, Netflix or social media etc - anything that allows us to blot out the unbearable feelings by bringing our compulsive focus elsewhere.

Those days when you get in through the door & the day has stunk so badly that you have the glass of wine poured before you even think about food & you fall onto the sofa phone in one hand & remote in the other zoning out, scrolling & binging on boxsets & crisps Firefighters are in charge & running the show.

We may find we veer more towards our Managers or Firefighters or we may find our Firefighters step in angrily when they decide that the Managers have messed it up, but these two parts are both just trying to keep us safe from that awful overwhelming feelings of shame that our Exile holds.

Now because each of these parts are like hurt kids doing the best that they can with the knowledge that they have, healing ourselves comes from learning how to bring parenting within us so we can help these parts feel safe knowing that we can cope.

Our Exiled part is our inner child, frozen in time, overwhelmed by emotion & stuck in flight-or-flight response.

To heal this part of us we need to let it know that it’s safe & that we are capable & confident in taking on the role of a loving parent who can hold its pain helping it to come to the other side.

We can bring loving parenting to our exiled part with somatic exercises like self-hugs, speaking to ourselves with kind words & making sure we tend to our basic needs – eating & drinking healthily & getting enough rest. We can also bring loving parenting inwards in the ways we compassionately notice with ourselves every time we handle difficult emotions & difficult things & consciously give ourselves praise. This way be through writing down what we have witnessed or speaking it aloud to ourselves, preferably before a mirror, even if it feels cringy at first. When we read or hear those words of praise the act feeds the confidence of our inner child. Our exiled inner child is watching & listening & feels it all & these gentle moments of inner parenting will help it to feel safe & secure, every act accumulating to let our vulnerable little kid feels less shut out. The beauty is that the more safe & included this little kid feels; the more healing we bring to the wounds that have kept us trapped in shame. In this new space of trust our inner child can become more creative & then slowly but surely the anxiety & shame begins to ease allowing our faith in our ideas to blossom. In this space of trust the imposter syndrome that may be fuelling our need to bring on our overworking Manager Protector part & our perfectionism becomes obsolete.

Our Manager Parts are like inner tweenagers acting the part of bosses – they want the job but they’ve kind of heard that it’s about shouting & being bossy & underneath all their bluster they’re really just scared kids without the right tools to do the job.

We can help these Manager parts to heal by giving them stuff do that allows then to feel helpful & responsible.

We can bring these Manager parts healing love by giving them responsibility for bringing us positive affirmations - with this role they can start to feel safe & responsible for leading change. When they’re in charge of reminding us that we are strong & resilient they feel purposeful & have no time for shouting at us that we are useless or catastrophising about the pending disaster over the horizon.

Our Firefighters are there to extinguish dangerous flames. They've got the hose in hand; they know they can bring oblivion but they are kids still & they are quaking inside at the extent of the power they hold.

To help them step into their role as emergency services we can give them responsibility for those powerful grounding techniques we can bring into play when we feel panic rising.

This helps them feel like they’re powerfully in charge of dowsing fires – every time we feel a binge-fest rising they can step in with the new emergency procedure - stop, pause, breathe & ground so we can refocus & reframe/refrain.

When we feel calm & confident in ourselves, we can notice the times when any of our parts are getting out of sorts & help them find their comfortable place, held within our Internal Family System.

If you like the sound of this theory of Internal Family Systems & would like to learn more about using this or any of the other holistic mindset & somatic tools that I love to use in Embody Loving You I would love to hear from you.

Warm Wordy Hugs

Laura xx