~Written by Karen M. Reed
When I began training in Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) several years ago, my whole life became a healing story. It is difficult to even know how to begin or focus in the attempt to tell it. I was drawn to the model after reading Dick’s textbook in graduate school. It stirred my heart. It just felt right to me. And now I know why!
Not long after beginning the training, I started to have difficulties being there without exiles crawling out of the woodwork. I knew I was a woman with a history of what I called “sexual problems,” but I did not know I was a person with a severe trauma history. I should applaud the strength and tenacity of my performing managers, who pulled it off so well they even had me fooled.
Most people who knew me as I was growing up considered me bright, popular, successful, and very likely to succeed. I think we all wondered over the years why that didn’t seem to be happening. It wasn’t that my life was a failure – I just never seemed to find myself or settle anywhere professionally. I always felt like I was running away inside. Truth be told, I was.
I knew that I had been through some sexual abuse as a foster child, and that I seemed to be a magnet for inappropriate treatment by men as I was growing up. As an adolescent and young adult I went through several long-term, destructive, illicit relationships. I blamed and hated myself for them. I remember wondering how and why I seemed to keep ending up in those situations, especially since I was a Christian and did not believe that was the way God wanted me to be living. From the time I had a personal encounter with Jesus at age 13, I loved Him and wanted to live in way that honored the love I found in that relationship.
But in spite of sincere and repeated repentance, and many attempts to find help, the destructive relationship patterns continued. As my despair about myself deepened, I began to develop secret firefighter activities to numb away from what I could not change. Drinking, binge eating, and abusive pornography were my favorites—not only did they numb me, they intensified and reinforced the self-hatred I was accumulating over the years.
Periodically I would seem to be getting my life under control—no destructive relationship for a year or so—hope in sight. But inevitably the cycle would resume, and I would once again be battling my inner demons. Few people knew what was going on inside. I managed to get a teaching degree, a ministerial degree, and more recently, a master’s degree. But I struggled to land anywhere professionally because I was internally tormented over my battle with destructive relationships and the drastic dichotomy I saw between my public and private lives. I did not like myself. I did not believe in myself. I did not know who I was.
I spent several seasons of my life not wanting to be alive at all. I made a few half-hearted attempts at suicide. And yet somehow, deep within, I knew that how I lived in secret was not really who I was. I never accepted it as truly me—I just couldn’t find the help I needed to create the congruence in my life for which I longed.
By the time I began studying IFS in CT in 2001, I had not been doing anything “wrong” in my life for many years. But neither had I healed my history, which was evidenced in my lack of professional confidence, and my faithful, unquestioning commitment to a difficult and painful marriage. I had constructed a story for my life that worked—until the exiles began showing up!
My first encounter with one of my exiles came at an advanced training weekend. The topic was sexuality—no surprise it would trigger some junk for me! I was so blended with the exile who came up that Dick did a piece of work with me. We ended up discovering an infant, who was buried under signs that read, “You can fuck me,” “You can hurt me,” “You can treat me like a thing.” I was shocked, amazed, and awed. I began to realize that I had a lot of work to do, and I began to do it, in earnest.
For nearly five years, as I continued to study and work clinically in the model, I was also involved in a deep and intense healing of my life from physical and sexual abuse, much of which was unconscious to me. I have been on an amazing journey of healing with memories going as far back as early infancy, and even in the womb. Sometimes it was difficult to believe the memories that parts began to show me could possibly have come from my life. But I knew I was not manufacturing the mind, body, and spirit torment, nor was I imagining the powerfully spiritual healing experiences I began to have.
Once I had a taste of what was possible for me through this work, it was all I wanted. Years of hopelessness, despair, and desperation began to melt away as my life started to heal. So often I thought I was done—I thought the peace, joy, and wholeness I felt after healing another exile would last forever. I was always surprised, and sometimes discouraged, to find yet another layer of beneath. But I was determined to keep going because I knew I was finding what I have been searching for all of my life.
Through the course of this journey I have written over 50 poems, most of them in times of deep and intense pain, and many of them predictive of where this path would take me. One of them, entitled, “IT MATTERS,” seems to summarize the journey for me. After so many failed attempts to heal my life, I had concluded that my pain, my suffering, my heartache, did not matter. There did not seem to be an answer for it, a solution to it. There was just something defective about me. What did it matter if I spent my life secretly burdened with self-loathing and despair?
But through IFS therapy I have found that it absolutely does matter, as does the pain of every human being, and there is an answer, a solution. I am so very grateful to God, to Dick, to this model, for the internal homecoming I have experienced in my life. I recognize the presence of God and Jesus every time another part is healed and brought home to my heart. Self, to me, is like that sacred presence—where peace, love, safety, and calm abide. For so long I knew that I belonged there—internally at home, unafraid, safe. I just could never seem to stay there.
Now I can. At last I am at peace within. I know myself, like myself, enjoy being with me. I am at rest with God in a way I have believed in for years, yet rarely could experience. The torment is over. The pain is gone. Joy is now my frequent companion. My life and my work are increasingly an overflow of that joy. I am forever grateful.
It is my heart’s desire that sharing this snapshot of my journey, through these writings, will encourage others to fully embrace and experience the healing power of the IFS model.
©Copyright 2007 Karen M. Reed. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. If you’d like to comment on this story, the author has given us permission to accept comments here. All comments are moderated.
