Harnessing the Warm, Nourishing Resource of Self-energy
Image by Brian Garcia/Unsplash
As regular readers will know, I am a big fan of internal family systems (IFS) therapy, having taken a deep dive into this warm, compassionate, transformative model. There is something about IFS that resonates deeply with me and my clients, who seem to love it too. It’s also hugely popular globally –in fact, to train in IFS you have to enter a lottery, as trainings are so oversubscribed – so it clearly resonates with millions of people around the world too.
If you have encountered IFS in these posts or elsewhere, you will know that the idea of Self is key – this is the inner resource we all possess, famously described by Dr Richard Schwartz, founder of IFS, as having eight qualities (that all happen to begin with C – Dr Schwartz is a big fan of alliteration): Calm, Compassion, Clarity, Confidence, Curiosity, Courage, Connectedness and Creativity.
The expression of these qualities, both inside your mind and body and with other people, is called Self-energy. This may sound a little mysterious, or even New Age-y, but there are many brain-based ways of understanding it. One idea I often share with my clients is that the body has innate healing processes, which is easy to understand if you imagine breaking your wrist in a skiing accident. It would hurt, of course, but hopefully you would find a nice, friendly doctor in your ski resort who would X-ray your arm, find the break and then protect it with a plaster cast.
After a few months, another doctor would remove the cast and off you would go, with a somewhat weak but fully healed wrist bone. So what healed your wrist? It wasn’t either doctor, or the plaster cast, although together they created the conditions for healing to occur. No, the healing came from within – you healed you, or more precisely your body healed itself. And that’s because your body is constantly healing itself, regenerating your organs, killing viruses and other invaders, cleansing toxins, growing new cells… Every second of your life something in you reaches the end of its lifespan, dies and is cleared away, to be replaced by miraculous new cellular stuff.
How Self-energy heals
The same is true of your mind and brain, where similar healing processes help you heal from even the worst, most traumatic life experiences. For example, if you have ever had your heart broken, you know how apt this description is – it really feels like your heart has been shattered into a million tiny pieces and that you will never, ever recover. But, with the vast majority of heartbreaks, you do. Because your mind and brain have helped you process the upsetting thoughts, feelings and memories, so the heartbreak is still sad, but consigned to the past, where it belongs. This (hopefully) allows you to trust again, to fall in love, to hope for a happier future.
And this is how I understand Self-energy, not as some mystical, unknowable force, but a mind/body-based healing resource, which can embrace the parts of you whose hearts have also been broken, but often by experiences in which they were too young to cope, or by trauma too deep to overcome alone. The magic of IFS is that we can harness this energy and healing life force, to help the parts of you that desperately need it. And it just works, gently but powerfully, when we can persuade the protective parts of you (which can, inadvertently, block the healing process) to allow this lovely process to unfold.
I am lucky enough to facilitate this healing on a daily basis, which is a great honour and a privilege. It’s why I have an unshakeable belief in IFS and the other trauma-informed models I offer my clients, why I am so confident in our ability to heal, grow and change over time. And it’s the reason for my oft-repeated mantra: Whatever you have been through, it’s never too much and never too late to heal.
If you are struggling right now, for any reason, my heartfelt wish is that this gives you a tiny chink of hope. Because hope is like gold dust when it comes to healing trauma. Just find yourself a good (mind) doctor, who knows how to wrap your wounded parts in plaster, and let Self-energy do the rest.
Love,
Dan ❤️
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