No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model

For us to live in this culture and not see the suffering of its exiles or feel the outrage of what we are doing to the Earth, we need distractions. We are provided with a plethora of firefighter activities to help us numb the pain of this moral injury. Remember, Self sees, feels, and acts to change injustice, so to not do any of that we need illega

Managers are parentified inner children. They are usually very tired and stressed out. They’re trying to keep the world safe for our exiles while at the same time keeping our exiles contained. They also have the ability to numb our bodies so we don’t feel so much, because if you don’t feel, then you don’t get triggered.

when people entered flow they found it to be extremely enjoyable and fulfilling, and they performed the associated activity for its own sake rather than for any extrinsic reward.

It’s as if each part is like a person with a true purpose.

There is another class of burdens that are called legacy burdens because they did not come from your direct life experience. Instead, you inherited them from your parents, who got them from their parents, and so on.

Let’s start with the exiles. These are often the younger ones that have frequently been called inner children in our culture. Before

After parts unburden, they will manifest their true nature in valuable qualities (like delight, joy, sensitivity, empathy, wonderment, sexuality) and resources (like the ability to focus, clear discernment, problem-solving, passion for serving others or the world) that you have new access to and enrich your life.

Each part—as scary or illuminating or mysterious as it may appear to be—could offer wisdom and solace and vision.

Because the mono-mind view is so ubiquitous and assumed in our culture, we never really question the truth of it.

From the IFS point of view, the quieting of the mind associated with mindfulness happens when the parts of us usually running our lives (our egos) relax, which then allows parts we have tried to bury (exiles) to ascend, bringing with them the emotions, beliefs, and memories they carry (burdens) that got them locked away in the first place.