Dusk scene, rear view of young person with long hair wearing white dress wandering through overgrown mazeLife does not always turn out the way we’d like. We carry our stories. In some moments, we might feel like kings. In others, we feel like failures. We feel grotesque. For some, the story says, “I’m too much.” For others, it might say, “I will never be enough.” In certain states, every line of the story reminds us we are defective, unsafe, lacking power to choose our life. Some stories empower and open up the world before us. Others isolate us, from people or from goals that seem unattainable.

Some stories confirm themselves. Despite our best intentions, some might appear to play out again and again as our behaviors sabotage our desires or elicit the reactions we fear most. It might seem as if we’re doomed to repeat the play forever.

 Meaning-Making and Automating Our Reactions

“The real connection we long for is the connection with ourselves; the connection with where we are here and now…When the connection with our own presence is broken everything just starts to feel empty.” —Jeff Foster

We carry stories. These stories are about our identity in the world, our connection to others, our purpose, what we are allowed, what they are permitted, our motives, and their intentions. These stories are the underlying codes that dictate the most mundane of choices. These choices might include what we eat, how we present our bodies when in public, or how we react to a romantic partner’s facial expression. These stories, created in response to experience, shape our predictions of every interaction between Self, Other, and World. While only occasionally accurate, they become the automatic, unquestioned backdrop of life. [fat_widget_right]

Subconsciously, we keep watch at an animal level. We track bodily reactions and micro-expressions of others, internalizing these as reflections of our identity in the world and creating rules around the best ways to navigate social interactions. At every emotionally charged moment, we are either building new stories or confirming old ones, and confirmation is easier.

We adapt, invisibly—especially in childhood as our templates are being set—to the surrounding culture and climate. We take it in and recreate it internally. And often in that process we separate from parts of Self. We reject or contain parts that threaten our survival in those settings, opting instead to present or create parts that harmonize with our environment.

This is the original trauma: disconnection from Self.

And in those overwhelmed, transformative moments, we forget our choices. We forget the parts we’ve exiled. We land in other parts of consciousness, and we often fail to recognize that our experience has changed because our relationships have changed. We don’t remember any other way of being. We simply go on, saying, “This is who I am.”

This is a dissociation, a disconnection. It’s also a new story, now running in the background, invisibly directing our play.

The parts of Self we contain remain present at some level. Unchanged, hidden within, they insinuate themselves into our daily choices. They are present in the ways we respond to emotion, our confusion, our unwanted thoughts or behaviors, our nameless depressions or anxieties, our reactive tantrums or withdrawals in romantic relationships.

These are the lower layers of experience. They’re the real agents behind our choices and behaviors.

When it comes to trauma, we cannot change the past. There is no do-over. Our storyteller simply weaves our experience into our narrative.

But while we can’t change the past, we can change its meaning. We can change the stories. And if we have patience and intention, if we bring the secret stories up to awareness, we can change our connection to Self, Other, and World.

Parts Framework

A parts framework simply echoes what we know from neurological studies: the brain is constantly making sense, forming a story, building a cohesive picture out of scattered and unrelated fragments. It finds patterns and creates the illusion of a cohesive whole.

In mindful exploration, we come to recognize that we are both the judge and the judged. We experience both simultaneously in our bodies. With practice, we can actually land fully in either position. We might be the abandoned or oppressed child one moment and then flip to become the part that hates that child or some part that feels love and empathy for the child.

By separating our experience into parts, we can observe the relationship between parts. We can recognize and mediate internal conflicts. We can step in and out of states, accessing them for the purpose of learning about them and finding empathy for them.

This is the work.

In these tiny moments of genuine empathy for the parts of Self that have survived trauma, we integrate. We acknowledge, accept, embrace, and join. In these moments, we are feeling what could not be felt in the past. We are seeing it through new eyes and gifting it a new story. This new story, something more palatable, releases us from the need for internal containment. We are providing some hurting parts with the love they need, the relational connection that should have happened after a traumatic moment.

The framework itself invites curiosity, decreases judgment and conflict, and opens up windows of access through which we can provide this missing experience. The end result is a felt sense of gentle witness. We feel seen, heard, felt, known, accepted, and loved.

Regulation First: External, then Internal—Other, Then Self.

“A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one’s heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.” —George Eliot

At a subconscious level, we track surroundings and social connections for physical and interpersonal threats. Doing with others utilizes our sympathetic nervous system. Being with someone is healing. Accessing our parasympathetic branch allows us to rest and digest, both physically and metaphorically.

External regulation occurs when we can witness the body of someone else in close proximity, remaining externally present to our experience without physical overwhelm on their part. When their body calms, smiles warmly, looks back at us with soft eyes, and remains connected to ours, our body calms. This is co-regulation. This is where we feel free and welcome to express ourselves with the knowledge that an Other is not burdened by us, wants us, will see the best of our intentions and “get” us. This is also an antidote to shame, an invitation to reveal those parts we thought we had to hide in exile.

Someone else can provide the regulation, by remaining calm and offering verbal assurance, validation, and permission, for example. But once we have internalized this experience at some point in life (whether with another person or even through watching movies), we can also provide our own calming as an internal process.

Many of us default to dissociation, controlling, fixing, placating, distracting, or other methods of internal management. These are often reactions internalized from early life caregivers. But our bodies naturally calm when internal parts are finally met in the ways they have yearned to be met.

Mindfulness and Distancing: States, Transitions, and Cycles

As trauma is stored in parts or states, with particular networks formed during traumatic periods, the way to heal is to head toward and access those states. By doing so, we bring new energy and kinder eyes. We amend an old story that was written with limited perspective. Each state comes with its own state-dependent memories, perceptions, expectations, rules of engagement, emotions, physical posture, and beliefs. Meeting each as a part—as a different version of you with its own persona—requires development of an observer. In other words, a part that is outside and separate that can provide empathy and support.

With practice, many people find state-shifting becomes easier. Quick shifts might require nothing more than remembering a friend’s smile or imagining a favorite place in nature. Longer-term shifts come when actually bringing novel experience, or missing experience, to some part of self that is expecting and preparing for negative outcomes.

Life becomes a bit easier when we recognize we are not our thoughts, not our sensations, and not our emotions. We can do this through mindful awareness, or by observing mind and bodily reactions. These will all play out on their own, and we can observe them safely, from a chosen distance. When we start to actually feel our own physical responses to each internal/external stimuli, when we give each response a name, we remove the mystery from these micro-transactions. Things may then become a bit more predictable, a bit more understandable, a bit more acceptable. We recognize that we’re okay, that things are as they are and nothing more. We recognize a story that makes sense, coming from a source we trust, and our body calms.

When it comes to trauma, we cannot change the past. There is no do-over. Our storyteller simply weaves our experience into our narrative. But while we can’t change the past, we can change its meaning. We can change the stories.

This in itself is a missing experience.

For many of us, there was nobody in childhood just sitting with us, looking at us with soft eyes, saying, “This is what you’re feeling in your body… It’s okay to feel this. It makes sense. Everyone feels this. This is a word we use to describe it… This is what you can expect… It will pass. You will be okay. I’m here with you. I’m not going anywhere, and I’m not burdened at all by your experience. Let’s just sit and feel it together.”

In working mindfully, we can observe all of these processes in real time. By accessing states, we can witness physical reactions, notice changes in perception and expectation, and begin mapping out the different parts that arise in response to triggers and resources. (In this case, triggers describe anything connected to defeating beliefs and resources describe anything connected to empowering beliefs.)

We come to see patterns in the way we relate to others, by observing internal reactions in triggered moments. We notice protective parts that seek confirmation of our worst fears, present evidence by bringing up memories, and project old fears into present experience. And in this, we find choice points: windows of opportunity to respond instead of react.

We can begin a relationship with these parts, once we differentiate from them. When we meet a stranger and feel our body constrict, we can recognize this reaction as that of the child inside, reacting to meeting a male that reminds it of its father. We can talk to the child, meet it, give it assurance and validation.

Transitions, too, come with stories. Transitions between physical settings, between internal states, or between modes and strategies used to navigate present needs. With practice, we can feel our body respond. Maybe it contracts to protect or expands to connect. In this, we can learn to tolerate uncomfortable states for longer periods of time, even breaking them down to simple bodily sensations. Those who are avoidantly attached may find peace in physically calming with an Other. For those on the anxious end of attachment, we can find genuine connection internally, ever present and responsive.

Distancing allows both space and connection. This is the process of stepping out of a hurting part and landing in a more safe or neutrally-observing part. We separate in order to meet, in order to experience an Other at an internal level.

In moving toward more cognitive distancing techniques, we might notice ourselves calming as we head toward “big picture” thinking. Outside of our present states, we may elicit curiosity, awe, and wonder when stepping back to observe patterns and cycles. From the simple in-and-out of our breath to the contractions and expansions of our life and the universe, to the rhythms of connection and disconnection in the present moment.

Sometimes just imagining hovering above our own body can create a distance that helps us differentiate from internal parts that are experiencing intense emotion. And this separation is actually what gives us the ability to come back and be with those parts in a healing manner. [amazon_affiliate]

Rather than being in the pain, we learn to be with it.

If you would like help beginning this process, contact a compassionate counselor today.

Read on for Part 2: Mindfully Heading Toward Discomfort

References:

  1. Gendlin, E. T. (1981). Focusing. New York: Bantam Books.
  2. Kurtz, Ron. (1985). The organization of experience in Hakomi Therapy. Hakomi Forum Professional Journal, 3(1), 3-9. Retrieved from http://www.hakomiinstitute.com/Forum/Issue3/OrganizationExperience.pdf
  3. Lewis, T., Amini, F., & Lannon, R. (2000). A general theory of love. New York: Random House.
  4. Noricks, J. S. (2011). Parts psychology: A new model of therapy for the treatment of psychological problems through healing the normal multiple personalities within us: Case studies in the psychotherapy of mental disorders. Los Angeles, CA: New University Press.
  5. Porges, S. W. (2011). The polyvagal theory: Neurophysiological foundations of emotions, attachment, communication, and self-regulation. New York, NY: W. W. Norton.
  6. Schwartz, R. C. (1995). Internal family systems therapy. New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
  7. Siegel, D. J. (2010). Mindsight: The new science of personal transformation. New York: Bantam Books.
  8. Van der Kolk, B. (2014). The body keeps the score. New York, NY: Viking.

Rear view of person on road raising arms to the sky Those of us who experienced abuse or neglect in childhood often struggle with inner voices that are self-critical and self-rejecting. These inner critics, voices of guilt, shame, self-abuse and self-rejection, can be toxic to our emotional and spiritual well-being. Their purpose in childhood was to protect us. They may have prevented further harm from caretakers who were abusive, rejecting, critical, or non-nurturing in one way or another. Sometimes we may even create them in order to push ourselves to overcome a lack of self-confidence or the inability to perform.

When we carry these hurtful inner voices into adulthood, they can continue the harmful role of the abusive or non-nurturing parent. In order to guard against these voices and send them away from our present lives before they bring us down, we first must recognize them when they show up in our consciousness. If we can recognize them and name them before they affect us, we can send them packing!

Eight Toxic Voices

This list describes eight of the more toxic inner critics that may show up in our consciousness from time to time:

1. The Judge
The Judge’s rigid and harsh view of morality has little nuance or compassion for us. All about right and wrong behavior and seeing that we behave “properly,” this inner voice is often develops when we absorb the words of a moralistic and authoritarian parent into our consciousness. [fat_widget_right]

2. The Accuser
Judge, jury, and executioner all rolled up into one, the Accuser does not wait and hover over us, looking out for our erring ways. This inner critic has already made up its mind that we are guilty, that we need to be punished.

3. The Guilt Tripper
This inner voice nags us about wrongs we have done and tells us we should feel bad about them. It is social conscience amped up about two magnitudes above where it should be. Instead of giving us social cues that could help us repair wrongs and mend relationships, it keeps us in an anxious state. In this state, we worry about having wronged someone and being in trouble for it instead of taking steps to fix our mistakes.

4. The Projector
As its name implies, this voice projects our own inner disapproval of ourselves onto others. We think others are thinking negative things about us. But the thoughts we imagine they are thinking are typically grounded in our own criticism of ourselves.

When dealing with critical (sometimes even bullying) internal voices, it is very useful to remember the following three action steps: recognize, reject, and affirm.

5. The Shamer
This voice tells us there is something fundamentally wrong, defective, bad, or shameful about us. These messages can give us a sense of hopelessness about our condition. This inner voice may shame us about parts of our nature that are part of who we are. If it is something we are not able to change, we may experience depression and despair.

6. The Rejecter
This inner voice tells us we are unworthy of being accepted by others, even ourselves. It tells us we don’t have a right to even take up space in the world.

7. The Demeaner
This inner critic tells us we are critically deficient in something very important that would allow us to be valued in human society. Our meritocratic culture emphasizes intelligence, attractiveness, social status, and financial position. In other words, if we feel we aren’t smart or good-looking or lack money and status, this inner voice may challenge us.

8. The Doubter
The voice of the Doubter can undermine our self-confidence. By calling into question our intelligence and ability to accomplish goals, the voice second-guesses our judgment, causing us to hold back.

Confronting Our Inner Critics

Learning to effectively deal with these inner critics can be vital to our well-being.

When dealing with critical (sometimes even bullying) internal voices, it is very useful to remember the following three action steps: recognize, reject, and affirm.

Overcoming our inner critics can be challenging, but it is possible. If you are finding it difficult to recognize and reject these voices on your own, the support of a therapist or counselor can be beneficial.

Latin mother kissing daughter with long hair on forehead in sunny, tree-lit areaAdolescence is well known to be a challenging time. Much has been written about the difficulties of early adolescence, especially as it relates to the development of girls. Dr. Mary Pipher’s 2005 book, Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls, written from her years of experience working with young women in therapy, is an exploration of her discovery that the process of developing into women is painful for many girls. Development in young women, she found, often involves the loss of self, which happens as girls internalize the pressure to be in service to others by becoming what other people seem to expect of them. In this way, they are fulfilling the desires of others. These pressures can manifest in many ways. The onset of negative body image or eating disorders are just two examples.

In my practice I have seen this loss of identity myself, in people who have struggled for years with disordered eating and poor body image. Many young women make an effort to control and hide their emotions by over-focusing on the body, hoping to earn back a sense of stability by attaining a certain ideal. But when attempts of trying to cope with difficult feelings and social pressures are externally focused, girls can end up losing who they are in the struggle.

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Rather than determining on their own who they are and how they want to navigate adulthood, many girls don’t know how they feel about anything, independent of the opinions of others. They cannot identify their likes or dislikes, and they no longer know what they stand for anymore. Sometimes they are unable to determine whether they are angry, bored, or hungry. They talk about feeling lost. I have found that the more time girls have spent fixated on the body and the way they look, the more work they often have to do to reclaim their sense of self.

Recently, researchers have been studying how social media affects the development of young women today. Consumption of social media can contribute to poor body image. One study found an overwhelming majority of girls had both home internet access and social media accounts. The time they spent online “significantly related” to unhealthy body monitoring and the internalization of the thin ideal. Further, the girls who used Facebook scored higher on all body image concern measures than those who did not use Facebook (Tiggermann &  Slater, 2013).

In another study, girls who had positive body images tended to be critical of the body ideals presented to them on social media and had a more complex and personal view of beauty. The authors discussed the importance of teaching media literacy and feminist theory to create more resilience in young women faced with societal pressure to achieve and maintain a certain type of body or appearance.

Helping Young Women Develop Strong Selves

We often cannot prevent the young women in our lives from being exposed to pressures such as the thin ideal, but we can protect them. Specifically, we can help girls increase their resilience by encouraging the growth and sustenance of a strong sense of self.

If you are unsure of how to begin exploring any of the above issues with your child, the support of a compassionate, qualified therapist or counselor may be of benefit. You might also consider seeking professional help if you struggle with your own emotions or sense of self or if your daughter is preoccupied with her weight or body and these conversations do not seem to helping.

We recognize the many challenges of adolescence, especially those related to body image and social pressures, are not specific to girls and young women. While this article focuses on the experience of young women, individuals of any gender may experience body image issues and disordered eating. If you (or your child) are struggling, we encourage you to seek support from a counselor. Help is available for all. 

References:

  1. Pipher, M. (2005). Reviving Ophelia: Saving the selves of adolescent girls. New York, NY: Riverhead Books.
  2. Holmqvist, K., & Frisén, A. (2012). “I bet they aren’t that perfect in reality:” Appearance ideals viewed from the perspective of adolescents with a positive body image. Body Image, 9(3), 388-395. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22542634
  3. Santa Cruz, J. (2014, March 10). Body image pressure increasingly affects boys. The Atlantic. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/03/body-image-pressure-increasingly-affects-boys/283897
  4. Tiggermann, M., & Slater, A. (2013). NetGirls: The internet, Facebook, and body image concern in adolescent girls. International Journal of Eating Disorders, 46(6). 630-633. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23712456
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