Tag: IFS

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Healing our Quiet Parts–with Friends! Or friendly faces

Yesterday I held my first Healing our Quiet Parts: An Antiracist IFS Workshop for White Allies. The workshop uses Internal Family Systems (IFS) and is influenced by values from a 6-month course in Somatic Abolitionism founded by Resmaa Menakem.

From IFS, I know that we all have a lot of parts helping manage all the situations we find ourselves in. That many parts try to keep us from feeling ashamed or guilty or lonely. These are likely protecting younger, more traumatized parts that experienced a lot of emotional pain. Thankfully these younger parts can be healed using IFS protocols. And the protective parts can relax if they learn our current age and witness our current life skills and surroundings (friends, lovers, family, job, home).

Using IFS to explore our parts and their impact on our bodies helps disrupts the tendency of white folk to tell stories or center their intention over their impact. From Somatic Abolitionism I learned that we must focus on ongoing community/group work, that healing is best done together, much as dreaming of a just world should be done together.

IFS helps identify the underlying younger parts that need healing and explore the complexity of the system: all the worries and fears that interfere with our ability to move forward, to be true allies and advocates in antiracist work. Healing younger part gives us the flexibility to approach the work from a more centered, creative, and calm place over time.

It was my first time delivering a workshop in nearly 10 years, so I invited four friends to my test workshop. It reminded me that healing work is best done with friends, or like-minded folk who sufficiently trust each other to have honest, vulnerable conversations about their experiences. There were silences throughout, but they were silences of growth and reflection, and the seeds of change.

Since I wanted to create an opportunity for change, I wanted to reassure all parts that the goal of the work was a compassionate listening ear. So we did a lot of work around the gifts/wisdom of the parts, whether those parts are excited to do antiracist work, or nervous about increasing the vulnerability and visibility of a person when they speak up. I learned that there may be true terror tied to speaking up, which may be a legacy burden white bodies carry (and probably many others).

I look forward to learning more as I continue this work. I approach this work not as an expert but as a collaborator and co-learner. I am doing this in part to increase community ties for myself and others.

As I had suspected there is a lot to be done! This is the first in a planned series of three workshops. First we get to know some of our protectors and exiles, then in the second workshop we work with our young parts that need healing for the whole system to further relax and engage, and in the third workshop we will work with the legacies of centuries of racism. At least that’s the current rough plan.

If you are interested in bringing a few friends to a four-hour exploration of the parts that get in your way when you want to be an antiracist, please contact me. Thanks for reading.

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Another Wave of COVID Grief Five Months In

Door open on mossy path
Door open on mossy path

In the last few weeks, my clients have started grieving COVID anew. Here in Philadelphia, we’re in a modified Green Phase, so we can eat outdoors at tables that stand six feet or more apart. In the city, we can theoretically do small outdoor gatherings of less than 50 people, but honestly, I’m not going anywhere near 50 people. Nor are my clients. We’re still pretty much in shut down mode. We shop for food every couple of weeks and that’s about it. We always wear masks outside the house, except inside our car. My clients report similar phenomena.

For my clients, acknowledging the pain and disappointment of the continuing precautions hurts. Whatever timelines we privately prepared for in March– this progress is slower and more ambiguous. In many ways, the reopening feels more painful and more complex than the closing, because everyone is navigating the new, looser rules with differing priorities, and differing assessments of acceptable risks. Now there is social stigma. We manage the emotional friction between those that continue to wear masks, per CDC guidelines, and those that don’t.

We grieve the understanding that this “Green Phase,” which feels far from normal, is the new “normal.” We’re still not seeing our friends and family with easy hearts. The calculus of who is at risk when we buy groceries endures. We’re still not engaging in the pleasures of travel and outings. Our innocence is stripped away. Seeing crowds on television shows brings out two feelings in me, “Oh my god, you lucky foods, you have no idea what’s coming. Your joy is such privilege” and “Dear lord that’s a superspreader event!” I feel like all my parts have battened down to endure this period of deprivation, of lack of community, of lack of human engagement. So now I ask, and I ask you to ask yourselves: Where is our joy?

Where can I find a sense that life is still a place of excitement and amazement? How do I connect with inner spaciousness? My connection to art and beauty, where has it gone?

It’s so easy to get swept up in my sense of duty and obligation, and to focus on the tasks, to focus on the work, instead of the human needs that have been shunted aside. So here are some considerations, as we hold another wave of grief and loss and the summer winds down:

Now that all plans are provisory, we still need to make plans to add lightness to our weeks. To comfort ourselves. What plans, what joys can we look forward to? My current plan in hatching is going to a drive-in cinema. My other plan in hatching is an evening run to the beach. What will your plan in hatching be?

I’ve switched from video calls (exhausting) to voice calls (intriguing) for keeping up with my friends. This also provides a nostalgia bonus–reminding me of hours wrapped along our long kitchen phone cord as a teenager. Community remains critical to our ability to feel engaged in our own lives and to reduce the isolation that comes with all the sacrifices we make during the COVID 19 pandemic. However you reinforce your sense of belonging, keep it up!

The most important change I’ve made is to check in with myself and consider my needs beyond my obligations. When I wake up in the morning, I ask myself, “What do I want to do for joy?” I then give myself an hour to write, or do whatever it is purely for my joy, my fun, my sense of an expansive self. My work self is critical but secondary.

Since I cannot go on vacation, I can save for vacation, and make a list of places to visit when I get the opportunity once again.

I’m no longer springing for gourmet take-out once a week, but I can enjoy mid-priced restaurants.

I’m eating more local produce and, in doing so, experiencing the seasons. I’m stocking my kitchen with the right tools for my frequent cooking efforts, and this improved kitchen environment lightens the load. My new cleaver can cut through anything, unapologetically.

My scope is shrinking, but in my better moments I like to think I am living more like a poet. Tuned into each moment, slow and aware, and full of gratitude.

I am in the process of completing Level 1 IFS Training and that has helped me reframe my experiences, to look at every moment through multiple eyes, multiple parts, and to realize no one part holds all the wisdom, life’s meaning lies in multiplicity. This means I am never all in despair and never all in hope. I lie in a grounded balance.