Metaphors, trauma and self

“It wasn’t only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.”  Ian McEwan

“Α person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended” Ian McEwan

In today’s post I’ll be referring to a chapter from Bessel van der Kolk’s book The Body Keeps the Score: Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma, as well as, the Wellbeing podcast at: https://www.rickhanson.net/being-well-podcast-internal-family-systems-therapy-with-susan-mcconnell/. Both the chapter and the podcast focus on the nature of the self, ways to heal the aspects of ourself that carry trauma, and ways to facilitate psychological growth and harmony through the use of the Internal Family System (IFS) approach.

I began last week’s post with a quote from Bessel van der Kolk about our mind and self. I will continue this thread today and share a bit more from his relevant book chapter. He writes we are all made up from different parts, which are not just feelings, but distinct ways of being, with their own beliefs, agendas, and roles in the overall ecology of our lives. He claims that how well we actually get along with ourselves depends on our internal leadership skills, which practically involves our capacity to listen to our parts, make them feel safe and taken care of, and keep them from sabotaging one another. In this chapter Bessel van der Kolk quotes William James, who in 1890 wrote: “It 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.” He also refers to Carl Jung who wrote: “The psyche is a self-regulating system that maintains its equilibrium just as the body does….The natural state of the human psyche consists in a jostling together of its components and in their contradictory behavior….. The reconciliation of these opposites is a major problem. Thus, the adversary is none other than ‘the other in me.” Similarly, modern neuroscience has confirmed this notion of the mind as a kind of society. In the chapter there are some references to Michael Gazzaniga, who in his book The Social Brain (1985) wrote “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.” Additionally, MIT scientist Marvin Minsky claims that “The legend of the single self can only divert us from the target of that inquiry.  It 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.”

This information has many implications when it comes to healing trauma or deepening our knowing of self. B van der Kolk writes that during therapy professionals 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. Although there are several such treatment approaches, in this chapter there is emphasis on Richard Schwartz’s work, the developer of Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS), which according to B van der Kolk offers a systematic way to work with the split-off parts that result from trauma. He writes: “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. 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…… Critical and perfectionist 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….”

In brief, IFS recognizes that the cultivation of mindful self-leadership is the foundation for healing from trauma. Neuroscience research shows that this is not just a metaphor because mindfulness increases activation of the medial prefrontal cortex and decreases activation of the amygdala, for instance, that triggers our emotional responses. Therefore, mindfulness can increase our control over the emotional brain. Through mindfulness we can survey our internal landscape with compassion and curiosity and steer us in the right direction for self-care. As Bessel van der |Kolk says “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. For trauma survivors the internal system 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 consistent harmony.”

In the podcast mentioned above, Forrest Hanson and Susan McConnell, who developed the Somatic IFS approach, explore the nature of the self, Somatic Internal Family Systems – a form of IFS therapy that helps bring parts together as a unified self because as they clarify while we might experience ourselves as being one unified self most of the time, we all have different characters, sub-personalities or “parts” and our relationship with some parts is better than others. Among other things they discuss how using the body helps us to become aware of our parts and the benefits of somatic psychotherapy; the process of healing and unifying all aspects of ourself; common parts that we all tend to have. The general groups of identified parts in everyone are: the exiles, which are our young parts that have experienced trauma and have become isolated from the rest of the system in an effort to protect the individual from feeling the pain; however, unhealed and unintegrated experience can leave us feeling fragile and vulnerable. There are also the managers, which basically run the day-to-day life of the individual. They can often strive hard, terrorize and criticize in an attempt to control and protect. There are the “parts” that are called firefighters, which are those parts that in an attempt to protect react when memories are activated or when the need to speak up arises, in a desperate effort to control and extinguish these desires or feelings. These are the parts of the self that may use addictive strategies, for instance.

Protective parts have a function: to protect the self and support survival even if this often comes at a price. To use a metaphor mentioned in the podcast the protector parts of our self are in some sense like the guard dog/s that make sure no one breaks into the house and steals the baby, but often these “guard dogs” prevent younger aspects of ourself to heal and be restored to their original roles and purpose of fun loving and creativity. B van der Kolk explains that often children who act out their pain rather than locking it down are diagnosed with “oppositional defiant behavior,” “attachment disorder,” or “conduct disorder”, but these labels ignore the fact that rage or  / and withdrawal are only facets of their desperate attempts at survival. That’s why trying to control a child’s behavior while failing to address the underlying issue can be ineffective and even harmful. He also provides examples of adults, for instance, men he has worked with, with childhood abuse histories, who were unaware of the parts of the system that carried the burden of their traumas. In their attempt to keep their memories and pain at bay, they compulsively worked out and lived in a masculine culture of sweat, football, and beer, where weakness and fear were concealed.

Summarily, the basic assumptions of this model are: the nature of the mind to be subdivided into “sub-personalities” or “parts”; the goal of therapy or IFS work is not to eliminate parts, but instead to help them find their non-extreme roles and to achieve balance and harmony within our internal system and empowerment; “parts” of our self may be experienced as thoughts, feelings, sensations, images, and more; “parts” develop a complex system of interactions among themselves and polarizations develop as parts try to gain influence within the system for various reasons, such as, conditioning and trauma; while experiences affect parts, parts are always in existence, either as potential or actuality. Apart from the totality of our parts, which compose the self, a different level of self, one could say, which in the IFS model is termed Self with a capital S always exists in everyone, even if buried by trauma, experiences and socialization. When the Self is not in charge, then according to IFS the Self identifies with a part, instead of being aware that only a part of me gets triggered when something happens. This is termed as “blending”.

When the Self leads the internal system we have a sense of being centred and grounded, competent, secure, self assured, calm, relaxed, compassionate. When the Self is in the lead, all our parts will exist and lend talents that reflect their non-extreme intentions. During the podcast a useful car metaphor was used to describe this. They mentioned that it is wise for the Self to be driving the car and calling the shots in one’s life, instead of the Self being in the back seat with tape over its mouth. In terms of the Self, Schwartz claims that this Self does not need to be cultivated because beneath the surface of the various protective parts there exists an undamaged essence, a Self that is confident, curious, calm, and has been sheltered from destruction by our protective aspects that have emerged in their effort to ensure survival.