You Are The One You’ve Been Waiting For AND You Can’t Heal In Isolation, Part 2

In You Are The One You’ve Been Waiting For (& You Still Need Others), Part 1, I hopefully made the case for why it’s a set up for failure when we expect our intimate loved ones to take responsibility for being the primary caregiver of nurturing comfort, unconditional love, validation, and approval for our wounded inner child parts. If we outsource that job, we’re setting other people up to let us down. It’s not that other people don’t have good intentions and want to nurture, love, and validate us. It’s just that other people always have their own parts, and when they blend with their own parts, they’re going to abandon our parts! And we’re going to do the same to them. So it’s not a stable bargain.

That said, I wanted to talk about one important way some people misinterpret the IFS model. When I first got involved with the IFS model 11 years ago, I noticed a lot of people with dominant “lone wolf” hyper-independent parts grasping onto the idea that Self is all our parts need in order to be happy, healthy, and regulated. Even IFS founder Dick Schwartz said some things that made me think parts of him wanted to believe that Self is all our parts need in order to be happy. That belief, which is not part of the IFS model, but can be misinterpreted as such, can be an effective way to bypass the vulnerability inherent in being human, which is that we are tribal beings and we need one another.

In the early days, what became the IFS Institute was originally called the Center for Self-Leadership, but the name changed because wise therapists in the community rightfully pointed out that Self-Leadership is not the only goal of IFS. While Self becoming the leader of the parts is one of the most important goals of IFS therapy, it’s magical thinking to believe that if Self is leading the parts, we won’t need other people to co-regulate us and help us thrive. That’s part of why the organization got renamed the IFS Institute.

Yes, we can meet a lot of the needs of many of our parts, and this can help them heal, relax, and act out less. But no human is capable of leading our parts all of the time. No one. Every single one of us will blend with our parts some of the time, and when we do, sometimes we need someone else to hold a safe, sacred, brave space for us, to lend us their own Self energy and help co-regulate us. Humans need other humans outside of ourselves, and that is normal. 

It’s also normal to attach and bond with other humans, and when those attachments break for some reason, we experience pain. So yes, we can attach our parts to our Self. When the primary attachment relationship is parts to Self, rather than parts to our partner, we’re less vulnerable if we then lose our partner. But that doesn’t prevent the pain of loss when we lose someone we’re attached to. IFS is not a way to bypass the vulnerabilities of attaching to another human being. But if we know and can bond with our own wounded inner children, that primary attachment can help us be less dependent on our partner. That way, our partner can be a secondary caregiver of our wounded inner children, but when our partner blends with parts and can’t be there for our wounded inner children in the way those parts prefer, we can still be with our own parts, from Self. This helps them feel less abandoned, even if our partner is temporarily or even permanently abandoning our parts.

The IFS Bypass

What IFS cannot do is prevent inevitable human grieving. I remember when my mother had just died, and my spiritual mother figure and mentor, Rachel Naomi Remen, was diagnosed with cancer just after my mother had died of cancer. Some of my parts started panicking, and I couldn’t stop crying. I took those parts to my IFS therapist, and I tried my damnedest to convince my parts that I would be their Rachel if Rachel died. I tried to sell them on the idea that me, in Self, would replace Rachel and be their new spiritual mother.

I laughed out loud in my therapy session when a part jumped in and called me “Shit Rachel.” As in, I’d be a shit substitute for Rachel, which is an assertion I just couldn’t argue with! They told me that they want Rachel in her own body, with her own spirit, with her own voice, and that if we lost Rachel, I would never be able to replace her. And they were right.

That was 8 years ago, and Rachel still has cancer, but she hasn’t died yet. I realized I had a Self-like part that wanted to avoid the inevitable grief I will feel when I one day lose Rachel. Yes, my Self can be with my grieving parts, and that will make the loss bearable, but you can’t use IFS to bypass grief. Grief is just another face of love. We only hurt so much when we lose someone because there was so much love present, and we attach to those we love.

We can’t use IFS to bypass our human vulnerability of needing other people, either. Lone wolf parts don’t want to have needs. They consider themselves needless and wantless- and they don’t want to have to depend upon anybody on the outside. But they’re just parts with an agenda to be needless and wantless, because they’re afraid of trusting other people, relying on others, and being dependent on others.

Real human beings need other humans. All of the science validates this need. There’s a reason that the most severe form of punishment is considered solitary confinement. It goes against human nature to isolate human beings. We are monkeys, and we need to belong to our tribe. No amount of success, fame, money, sex, power, drugs or booze, or possessions will replace that vulnerable human need for connection, no matter how Self-led you might be.

That’s partly why monks who have lived in caves and are considered enlightened act so badly when they come out of their caves and are exposed to other human beings! They weren’t enlightened. They were just blending with avoidantly attached parts that need other human beings, but have convinced themselves that all they need is God or Buddha or whatever replacement for human attachment they’ve tried to convince themselves is good enough. 

Some people in the IFS world are guilty of doing what I call the “IFS bypass.” It’s the IFS version of the spiritual bypass. It replaces God or Buddha with Self and suggests that the only attachment you need is Self to parts. But again, that’s something people with avoidant attachment like to believe, but it’s not true. In the IFS world, we call that being blended with a “Self-like part.” Self-like parts act like Self, but they have an agenda. Self has no agenda. But Self-like parts might have an agenda to never need other humans, for example, or to be entirely self-sufficient and invulnerable.  

We Need Each Other In Order To Heal

The good news is that you are the one you’ve been waiting for. AND…we need each other and can help each other heal, relationally. If you’re new to IFS or seeking a community to learn more about how to practice IFS as a self-help healing tool, please join us for a 6-week Zoom online course IFS For Self-Healing.

Save $100 if you register now for IFS For Self-Healing.

If you know clients, family members, or friends who might benefit from the class, please feel free to pass the invitation along. You do not need to be a therapist or doctor in order to attend. Anyone with a desire to learn more about the IFS model for the purposes of self-healing is welcome to join us!