A lot of my inner challenges and stuck-nesses have the following form:
I’m bothered by a thought, and the thought is true enough that I don’t feel comfortable ignoring it, or doing any of the other therapy techniques one might use to deal with untrue, harmful thoughts; but nonetheless, the particular way the thought lands on me and I respond to it is painful, skewed, unhelpful, or not in touch with reality.
Some examples:
Reasonable Thought: I want to do more exercise and eat more healthily
Unreasonable Response: feeling bad about my body; deciding to do X Weird Diet but falling off the wagon immediately; feeling guilty for not exercising even when there’s good reason (like I’m ill)
Reasonable Thought: I want to do more good in the world, and do more to tackle the problems I see.
Unreasonable Response: “argh, I’ve never done anything good; I’m a failure; I’m completely overwhelmed’ this task is impossible…”; reactively signing up to do things that ‘seem vaguely good’; shutting down.
Reasonable Thought: I disagree with something a client wants me to do
Unreasonable Response: defensiveness, internal arguments and rumination, forming grand theories about the oppressiveness of our current capitalist work culture and how I would never have any interpersonal problems in the anarchist utopia, etc.
I think these problems are sticky because in all these cases, the Unreasonable Responses are not helpful (even ‘on their own terms’) and cause me pain, but they always feel inextricably attached to this Reasonable Attitude, so they’re hard to defuse without seeming to let go of a real value, or lose contact with reality.
Therapy paradigms such as CBT teach you how to correct false beliefs, either explicit or implicit. But in these cases, CBT doesn’t seem appropriate, because of the high-level Reasonable Attitude, which I don’t think is false and I have no interest in challenging.
Meanwhile, Internal Family Systems would say something like: you need to find the younger parts who drives the false beliefs and let them know that the situation is different so their maladaptive strategies are no longer needed. For example, you might show a 5-year-old part that they no longer need to be hyper-self-critical in order to survive a toxic family environment.
But in these cases, I don’t know exactly what I’m telling the young part! I can’t tell that exercise or doing good or how I work doesn’t matter, because those things do matter. The changed situation or the skewed belief is somewhere more subtle.
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A thought that’s related but maybe orthogonal: does therapy and inner work have a nihilistic tendency?
Some people who get really into meditation or mindfulness, seem to become more nihilistic. They detach from their thoughts so much that nothing seems to matter. And some therapy books have this tendency too. For example, ‘The Happiness Trap’ suggests that you might want to internally sing your self-critical thoughts to a silly tune, to help you realise that they are ‘just thoughts’. And this might be a reasonable tactic if your self-critical thoughts are ‘you’re so ugly/lazy/useless/stupid/terrible/whatever’ —if they’re just clearly mean and false, or at least subjective. But if your self-critical thoughts are ‘you’re not doing enough good in the world’ - idk man.
I remember a conversation with a former therapist where I was talking about how I have parts that care about my PhD, and parts who care about admin, and parts who care about doing good in the world, and they all argue and shout at me and I don’t know what to prioritise. She asked, why do they care about these things? What would happen if you didn’t work on your PhD, didn’t do admin, and did do good in the world?
And iirc, for the PhD and admin, I ended up realising that my desires do link up to some traumatic belief, perhaps a belief that I’d be bad in some way if I didn’t do the dishes or finish my chapter.
But for doing good in the world… idk, I was just like ‘…because it’s important? Like, it’s just actually important to be altruistic? I value altruism? I don’t know how to explain it more than that?’
But the tricky thing is: of course loads of people relate to altruism and doing good in a way that’s riddled with trauma and bias and skewed-ness and unnecessary self-criticism. And that’s probably true of me too. But the line of questioning ‘what bad thing would happen if you stopped caring about this?’ isn’t going to help solve that, because the bad thing that would happen is ‘the world will be worse than it would have been otherwise’. And I just…do care about that?
Great articulation of a problem. In both sections of the post, it sounds like the therapizer is trying to crush a thought despite it having value, which you're unwilling to do (because you see the value in the thought).
In IFS, how does one communicate with a part, in order to understand what it needs? How can you do so without putting words in its mouth?
In answer to the question about what you are supposed to tell the young parts, why wouldn't you be supposed to tell them something like the following? "I agree with the reasonable attitude -- we both want to look after my long-term health -- but your strategies (such as feeling ugly or guilty or ashamed) are not actually relevant to that." That's what I'd say to someone who was recommending I e.g. feel ugly. What am I missing, if anything?
I'm reading a book now called "Disentangling from Emotionally Immature People" and something I read this week resonated as I read your words. About how sometimes our past relationships train us to feel bad when people make unreasonable demands. "If you grew up with emotionally immature parents a part of your personality may be standing by, ready to enforce guilt and shame even when you know better. After all, guilt and shame are the native currency of an entangled relationship with an emotionally immature person. But when you feel that stab of indoctrinated guilt, telling you what a bad person you are..remember that feeling so awful about yourself is never representative of the truth. Gain objectivity by labeling the judgment as an emotionally immature person's power play, and dispassionately observe how they try to inflame your self-doubt. Recall your sensible reasons, then follow what your adult mind knows is best. As you're being criticized by an unreasonable emotionally immature person, remember that your worry about being mean/heartless/selfish is a good indicator that you've started taking care of yourself."