Dick Schwartz (5:56)

Great to be back, Dan. I really enjoyed the last time, so I did too.

Dan Harris (6:00)

And your work has had a big influence on my own thinking and my own work. So it's a pleasure to talk to you again.

Dick Schwartz (6:06)

I'm very honored to hear that. I didn't realize that. So really grateful.

Dan Harris (6:10)

I want to talk about your new book, but I thought maybe it would make sense to start with a refresher on ifs internal family systems. Let me hand you the mic and you can just walk us through the basics of it.

Dick Schwartz (6:23)

Okay, so there's a couple big pieces to it. So one, in contrast to the most common way of understanding the mind, which is to think of it as unitary, I believe it's the natural state of the mind to be multiple. And that people with that diagnosis of multiple personality are no different from anybody else, except that their system got blown apart more by the horrific trauma they suffered. But the idea that we all have these little inner beings, these little inner personalities is for me, a natural state of the mind. And that they also, before they're hurt or when they're not hurt, they're incredibly valuable. Each of them are there for a good reason. They have talents and resources to help us in our lives. But that trauma and what's called attachment injuries, which is basically bad parenting, and all the things we suffer, especially when we're kids, force them out of their naturally valuable states into roles that can be quite destructive in our lives and freeze them in time. So that many of these parts, you know, if I were to have you ask a part of you, like a critic or something, how old it thought you were, most people get a single digit, they still think you're five or six and they still have to protect you in the way they did back then. So they get frozen in time and they take in what I call burdens, which are the extreme beliefs and emotions that came into you during the trauma and then graft onto them and then drive the way they operate like a virus might. So that's the state of most of our parts, at least the ones that I tend to work with, because I'm a therapist, I'm trying to help people with the parts that are getting in their way. So the other couple pieces of this, because I come from a family therapy background, I had two advantages. One is I didn't know anything about intrapsychic work, psychoanalysis, or any of that. So when clients started talking about this back in the early 80s, these parts, I really just had to listen and try to understand what they were saying rather than impose a theory on them. And the second advantage I had is from family therapy. I was a systems thinker. So in families, we would track the interactions of family members with each other. And then try to make a map of who's alive to whom and who's polarized with whom. And you can do that. And with that map, then we would know where to go to try and intervene. So I began doing that with these parts. I wasn't interested in each one individually, but how do they relate to each other as a system? And a map I came up with ultimately, which is held up as this very useful map over these 40 years, is that there are these other systems, we call them inner children. These young, vulnerable parts of us who are very sensitive, but also when they're not hurt, are playful and joyful and creative and loving. And we love them because they're our most precious qualities a lot of the time. But they're the ones, because they're most sensitive, that get hurt the most. And so they take on the burden of terror from some trauma, or the burden of worthlessness and shame, or the burden of emotional pain. And then once they carry that and they're stuck in those scenes, we don't want to be around them anymore. Because they have the power to overwhelm us with those feelings and pull us back into those scenes. And so we have almost natural instinct to lock those parts away. And our culture tells us to do that. This is a just move on, don't look back kind of culture. So we try to move on from the memories and the emotions of the trauma, but not realizing that we're also moving away from the parts of us that were hurt the most. So we call those exiles. When you do that, not only do those parts get hurt because you've abandoned them, but you lose contact with those wonderful qualities they carry. And so most of us growing up in this culture have a bunch of exiles. And when you have a bunch of those kind of raw, vulnerable parts, you feel more delicate. Because so many things could trigger that. And the world seems more dangerous because so many things could trigger it. And so other parts are forced out of their naturally valuable states to become protectors. Some of them are trying to protect you by managing your life so that your exiles don't get triggered. So they'll manage your relationships so no one gets close enough to hurt you again. Or they'll try to make you look perfect so no one rejects you, or they'll try to make you achieve at a high level to counter the worthlessness, make you take care of everybody so that they depend on you, they don't leave you, don't let you take care of yourself. So these are just some of the common, what I call manager protector roles that otherwise people call the ego, basically. But they have in common the desire to keep you safe and in control and to please people, and mainly so that you can not get triggered. These exiles don't burst out with their flames of raw emotion now. Doesn't always work. And the world has a way of breaking through those defenses and triggering your exiles. And when that happens, that's a big emergency because it feels like these raw flames of emotion are going to take you out. And for many of the people I work with, they do. You know, when you get really triggered, you can't function. And some people are in bed for a week and so on. So it's all very real. So there are other parts who are kind of on standby, waiting to deal with this explosion of flames of emotion by either getting you higher than those flames or dousing them with some substance or distracting you until they burn themselves out. So we call those firefighters. So that's the map. It's pretty simple. Exiles and then two different kinds of protectors. One, the managers who are trying to preempt anything that might trigger the exiles, and then the firefighters who react after the fact, after an exile has been triggered. And in contrast to the managers who are careful and try to keep you in control and please people, these firefighters don't care about the consequences to your body, to your relationships. They just got to get you away from those feelings right now, no matter what it takes. And so there's built in polarizations inside of us also between the part that when you feel that wants to get you drunk, and then the part that attacks you for being a drunk and so on. That's the map of the parts. But actually, the big deal about ifs and I, I think this is very related to your work, is that in addition to these parts, there's a kind of essence in people that I call the self with a capital S. And I just stumbled onto that discovery back in the day, you know, way a long time ago, because as a family therapist, once I got hip to the fact these parts weren't what they seemed and they needed to be listened to rather than fought with, I would try to get clients to do that. So maybe I'm having you try to get to know your critic and to get curious about it rather than hate it. And you're doing that, and you're listening to the critic and it's telling you about how it's trying to protect you by running down your confidence so you don't take risks or by pushing you to achieve more or. So there's always a positive intention, even though often it backfires. So I'm trying to get you to listen and even extend some appreciation to this part that you've hated. And then suddenly the part that hates it has jumped in and is doing the talking. And so things go south. And it reminded me of family sessions where I'm trying to have two family members talk to each other and a third member comes in and sides with one against the other, and it goes south. And I began asking clients, could you find the part that hates the critic or afraid of it, or whatever part you're working with has got an attitude about? And could you ask that one to give us the space to just get to know this one we're trying to work with? And to my amazement, when these other parts would separate, it was like some other person popped out and would do the talking and had these qualities that were really useful, like was calm, where seconds earlier they were really agitated, or had confidence relative to the part, or were just purely curious about it, and also often would suddenly become compassionate toward it. And in that state, whatever part, the critic, let's say, would drop its guard and would really respond well. And then the client would basically take over the session and would know how to relate in a healing way to this part. And when I would do that with other clients, it was like the same person would pop out with those same C word qualities. Calm, confident, compassion, curiosity, but also would be clear, the image would change, or would be courageous and could go to places that couldn't before, or would be creative in how they related to the part or feel connected to it. And when I would ask people, what part of you is that? That's great, let's keep that around, they'd say, some version of that's not a part like these others, that's my self. So that's why I came to call that the self with a capital s. And now, 40 years later, we can safely say that that self is in everybody, can't be damaged, knows how to heal, and is just beneath the surface of these parts, such that when they open space, it pops out spontaneously. And so that's the big deal about ifs. That's what I'm trying to bring to the culture, is this kind of different understanding of human beings and the mind that is much more uplifting.

Dan Harris (17:03)

Actually, you said a lot there, so I'm going to try to sum it up. Although it's a lot to sum up, but essentially the IFS model says, I think it's intuitive, really. We all have these different modes, these different aspects of our personality. Angry, jealous, happy, creative, ashamed, whatever. And you refer to these as parts. Sometimes these parts get inflamed, exacerbated through the trauma of our lives, and we try to compartmentalize or shut them out because it's too painful to handle. At that point, the part becomes an exile.

Dick Schwartz (17:40)

That's correct.

Dan Harris (17:41)

At which point we see the emergence of two you might call protector parts. The manager, often an inner critic who's kind of like a sheepdog, trying to keep everybody in line to manage things so that the exiles don't grab the mic. And alternatively, the firefighter, who's much less regulated and will try to douse the flames with alcohol or shopping or gambling or whatever it is. Both are trying to manage the exile in different ways.

Dick Schwartz (18:12)

That's correct.

Dan Harris (18:13)

The route to sanity is to, first of all, to recognize that we have all of these parts and then to the best of your ability to relate to them from what you're calling the capital S self. And so I know we talked about this last time, but I think it's worth bringing up again. What is the link for you between what you're calling the capital S self and what in Buddhism we would call not self? Like our core is that we have no core. That there. The. The self, the idea that there's some core, Dan, behind my eyes, between my ears, that's an illusion, in fact, a really harmful illusion. Whereas you're pointing to this capital S self as being the point of origination for healing.

Dick Schwartz (18:58)

Yeah. So I've had many, many of these conversations with Buddhists, and what we can usually come to is it's linguistics. So what they're calling self is really what I'm calling parts. So no self in Buddhism is really the absence of these Sometimes extreme voices and parts that are cluttering your mind. And as you get them to open space inside, you find this kind of calm essence that people call no self in Buddhism, but for me is really the self with a capital S. So that's where I've come to reconcile it.

Dan Harris (19:38)

And for somebody who's having. I can imagine at this point, listeners being a little confused. And I'm probably part of the problem because I brought in this hard to understand concept of no self. But just, again, very simply, your concept of the self is the best part of us, the sanest, calmest, clearest, most compassionate aspect of the human mind.

Dick Schwartz (20:01)

Yeah. And it's our essence, actually. It's who we are when all these parts separate. And it has these great C word qualities that I just mentioned and some other kinds of qualities. And for me, and this is related to your work too, I think when I encountered it in people, I couldn't reconcile its existence because I'd been trained in what's called attachment theory to believe that to have any of that inside, you had to have gotten it from a relationship. So as a child, you needed to have gotten it from good enough parenting. If you didn't get it there, you had to get it from a therapist. If you didn't get it there, you had to get it from a spouse or someplace for it to be native inside of us. And I was working with people who had been horribly abused on a daily basis as children. And so there was no way I could reconcile encountering this in them with that theory. So it wasn't until I started, and I was sort of directed to look into spirituality, that I could ground that observation. Because like you were saying about Buddhism, virtually every spiritual tradition has a word for this, and almost no other psychologies do. So in Buddhism, it's not only no self, but it's also Buddha nature. And in Christianity would be Christ consciousness. In Hinduism it's atma, and in Judaism it's nefesh and so on. I actually co authored a book where we went through each tradition and identified that essence that we were finding in us and how they describe it in very similar ways. But I was finding that we could access that very quickly in people, even people who've been horribly traumatized, in contrast to a lot of those traditions where you have to meditate 20 years to get to it. But for me, it is the same, and it is a kind of drop of a bigger ocean. So the model in my own thinking has much more evolved in a spiritual direction that way. That There is this big self that others have other names for, that you can access through meditation, you can access through psychedelics, and that, you know, this is a. A particle of that big wave or a drop of that big ocean.

Dan Harris (22:18)

Yeah. There's a whole debate here that I don't think we should have about big self, because I think there are some in the Buddhist world, including many of my own teachers, who would say, as long as you're identifying with anything, you're suffering. But let me set that aside and go to this notion of. In the later schools of Buddhism, of a Buddha nature, which, as you said, there are names for this in many spiritual traditions. My understanding is this kind of gets us into the debate of, like, what is fundamental about human nature. Are we red in tooth and claw? Are we rotten root and branch, or are we essentially good? And I'm not an expert in this, but my understanding is there are some data coming out of the sciences indicating that actually, like in our raw estate, you know, if you look at a baby, for example, and put in front of a baby, like a mean character or a nice character, they'll very naturally gravitate toward the nice character. Or if you have a baby or a toddler in the room, somebody participating in the experiment pantomimes being in pain, they will naturally express concern and try to help. So there are some indications that this idea of a Buddha nature or essential goodness, it doesn't require exogenous factors like good parenting. It's just in us.

Dick Schwartz (23:37)

Yeah. So I'm just finishing reading for the second time a book by a guy named Rucker Bregman called Humankind, where he goes through all the data there is to show that we've been laboring under this misconception about what people are really like. And we do have this really good essence. So I'd recommend that I wrote it down. Includes the research you're talking about.

Dan Harris (24:03)

Yeah, maybe a guest on this show. I do want to get to the practical, because that's the subject of your new book. But just to stay on the. With the sort of esoterica for a second. You know, when you talk about managers and firefighters, again, just to refresh people's memories, these are the parts that we develop to keep our shit together. In the case of the manager, often the manager manifests as a kind of inner critic, keeping you in line. And then the firefighter is kind of a wanton, reckless. Pain relief, often, you know, just, let's just get us out of this. Let's save us from the exiled, unwanted parts of ourselves by drowning it in some sort of dopamine ocean. It reminds me a little bit, especially the managers. And here is where I could probably get myself in trouble with Buddhist scholars, but to the very small extent to which I understand protect your deities within Tibetan Buddhism. I'm wondering whether there's some overlap there.

Dick Schwartz (25:07)

I think so, yeah. I've been collaborating a little bit with just Sultramalione. Do you know that name? She wrote a book called Feeding your demons, and she's a Tibetan lama. You know, that's where we've come to some agreement that those demons, they call them, are really just these protective parts and that rather than fight with them, feed them and help them calm down and relax and transform. So, yeah, I agree with that.

Dan Harris (25:36)

It's so interesting. She has this term, feeding your demons. I kind of independently arrived. Well, independently. Nothing's independent in a codependent universe or an interdependent universe. But I've started using the term high fiving your demons.

Dick Schwartz (25:51)

That's great. Yeah.

Dan Harris (25:52)

You know, and I've learned this from you, and I've also learned it through the work of Kristin Neff and others involved in self compassion and of course, in my Buddhist practice and studies. You know, I think my traditional approach and the approach of many people is to use the managers or the firefighters to keep the exiles at bay. And it's pretty hostile. Whereas if you blow them a kiss or give them a high five or feed them, not in the sense of indulgence exactly, but in a sense of like, thank you. I recognize that these exile parts, or even the managers I may not like, are essentially, as you said before, the organism trying to protect itself totally. We develop these habits and patterns often for very good reasons, but they're not skillful. If you welcome them to the party and give them a party hat and let them sit at the table, they often get quite compliant.

Dick Schwartz (26:44)

Very much. Yeah. That is part of what I'm trying to bring. I actually could reference a book because we're talking so much about Buddhism that just came out called Outshining trauma by a guy named Ralph Dolorosa. And it's all about ifs and Buddhism. And one of the big pieces of it is that there's been such an attitude about the ego in so many Buddhist traditions and that we're really trying to get Buddhists to do what you're talking about, which is to love them up. And if you do that, instead of trying to shoo them away, these parts, that you get much more cooperation in your Meditation, Yes.

Dan Harris (27:26)

What I realized, doing high dose loving kindness meditation, where you flood the mind with warmth, it can feel quite forced or treacly or saccharine, this practice. But what I realized after I got over myself and allowed myself to do it at a high dosage was as my demons, let's call them that, or my parts, whatever you want to say, were emerging in my practice. I was meeting them with more warmth and I was realizing that my mindfulness practice heretofore was shot through with aversion.

Dick Schwartz (27:56)

Totally.

Dan Harris (27:57)

And aversion is, in Buddhist speak, a hindrance.

Dick Schwartz (28:00)

That's right.

Dan Harris (28:01)

If you're actually feeling aversion towards something, you're not truly being mindful of it. So mindfulness properly understood, self awareness, properly understood, contains in it a kind of mixture of warmth and non judgmentalism. And I was practicing mindfulness improperly up until that point. Really?

Dick Schwartz (28:21)

Maybe. I mean, I've just run into many Buddhist teachings that actually encourage you to do it that way. So yeah, so this is revolutionary in the Buddhist world. And another woman named Lama Willa Baker has really transformed her teaching around that. And it's hard to be loving and compassionate to this ego that gets vilified in Buddhism. It's a lot easier if you think of them as these little inner beings who are trying their best to keep you safe. And sometimes they're misguided. So how you think of this makes a big difference in how you, how you can relate to them.

Dan Harris (29:02)

Coming up, Dick Schwartz talks about the definition of love, how to make peace with your parts, even if you don't have a trained therapist in the room with you. And we do a demo where I play guinea pig to show you how this might work. Again, I'm going to promise that we're going to get to the practical stuff very soon. But let me.

Dick Schwartz (29:28)

I'm really okay. I'm loving this conversation. So whatever we want to do is fine with me.

Dan Harris (29:32)

It's more, it's. That's more me talking to the listener than it is talking to you. Okay, but, but as a point of personal privilege, just taking advantage of my abusing my role of, of host to ask some shit that is interesting. Perhaps only to me that this is truly self indulgent what I'm about to ask. So I've been working on my own book, as listeners know, for six and a half years now. One of my struggles is. I don't know if I can clearly articulate the thesis, but let me try and see how it lands for you. For me, I've been struck show 700 interviews, eight years, that there's this whole very interesting body of research and practice around how you relate to yourself. And I would put in that bucket ifs self compassion, Ethan Cross's work about, you know, rewiring your inner chatter. There's a ton of work around. You might call it self love writ large. Just relating to yourself in a more skillful way. Simultaneously, there's this whole other body of work on let's call it social fitness. So guys like Robert Waldinger, Barbara Fredrickson, who's looked at micro interactions, who have correctly diagnosed that humans are social species. And yet nobody teaches us how to relate to other members of Homo sapiens. And there are communication skills, there are the skills related to empathy and compassion, intellectual humility, all of this science and practice around getting along better with other people. And so I'm interested in combining these two things because there is data to show that if you are cooler with yourself, your relationships with other people will improve. And because your relationships with other people are the most important variable in human flourishing, according to the data that I've seen, then your inner weather gets even better and you're on this upward spiral. And roughly speaking, I can't think of any better word to describe this whole amalgamation of skills and science than just love.

Dick Schwartz (31:27)

Totally agree.

Dan Harris (31:28)

As an omnidirectional force that applies outward and inward. So that's basically what I'm trying to talk about in this book. You're an actual expert. I'm just a guy. How does all of that sound to you?

Dick Schwartz (31:38)

That sounds great. I would tweak it a little, if you're okay with that.

Dan Harris (31:42)

So please, please.

Dick Schwartz (31:44)

So for me, there are these two schools in Buddhism. Some Buddhist practices fall into one of those, which is you have to build up the muscle of compassion and love and takes a lot of practice and work. And then there's where I come from, which is much more what we call a constraint releasing approach that says it's all in there and the goal is to release it. You don't have to build it up because once you get to it, you know, from self, what I call self, how to relate to people in a good way. It's just an aid in us. So the goal becomes to find the parts and the burdens they carry and unburden those parts so that they don't close your heart, they don't keep your heart closed all the time. And then you just are in this other state a lot of your life. So I hope you can understand the distinction I'm trying to make. So rather than building up these qualities through practice, we're just kind of helping to find the obstacles to them and then helping those parts trust it's safe to release that. And one of the problems I have with the other approach is that as you try to. And you said it's a lot of work as you try to have all this compassion for yourself and others, many people with a lot of trauma have trouble with that. They have parts, that's where they would never feel compassion for another person or from certain other parts of themselves. And so you're trying to bypass those parts and they'll keep interfering. But if you go to those parts and you help them, and you go to them with compassion and you help them understand the larger project and help them get on board with it, then you don't have to work to have compassion. It's just natural. And the other thing I would say, because I do agree with this, what you were saying, that if you can have compassion for all parts of you, then when other people act like those parts of the outside world, you can have compassion for them. But if you hate certain parts of you or you are afraid of certain parts, when those people act that way, you're going to have that reaction to them as well. So that's how the inside and outside play out in ifs.

Dan Harris (34:02)

Yeah. Just to pick up on the latter point, and we can get back to the former point about the work model versus the sort of I haves model. I don't even know if I'm putting the right terms on it. But on the latter part, about your relationship to yourself, redounding to how you are with the world, I kind of. This is a less catchy term, but I kind of think of it as like a contact theory. Most of us spend most of our time. You know, I'm now pointing at my head at a limited number of regions in the brain, often referred to as default mode network. We're just chattering to ourselves, judging, thinking about the past, thinking about the future, keeping at bay the parts of our personality that you call the exiles that we. That we don't want to deal with, and also keeping at bay much of the world, not really wanting to deal with other people's difficult stuff, especially now. Now the whole world militates against contact because we're further and further in our distraction devices and our information silos. And I kind of think of the, what I'm calling love as another. Just a. A way out of the default mode network or What David Foster Wallace, the unfortunately departed novelist, called the skull sized kingdom. We're just stuck in these shells. As opposed to, you know, one way to put it. And you used this term earlier. I don't love this terminology, but I think there's probably some part of me that is stopping me from loving this terminology. But opening your heart?

Dick Schwartz (35:32)

Yeah. So you want me to react to that? Yeah.

Dan Harris (35:36)

Call me a dummy, whatever. Whatever reaction is. It's all safe here, Dick.

Dick Schwartz (35:41)

Okay, good. Well, you're not a dummy, but at least not. And I agree with what you're saying, basically. Luckily for you, I agree with what you just said. So when people are dominated by these protectors, which would be. And I want to make it clear that the protectors are not their roles, they're very valuable parts that get forced into these roles. It's not their nature. And they'll transform as you help them. But most of us are dominated to some degree or another by managers. Most are getting us through our day. And then we have these reactive firefighters when they're necessary, but they all operate in the default mode network. And so for me, the brain is just a tool that these parts use. It's not that that's what it is. It's not that that's where the juice is. If we were to try and change things, because I hope someday to do the brain scan research where I can show. Because, you know, my friend Bessel Vaniculk has these great slides where traumatized people are just offline, basically. But for me, that's because a dissociative part has taken over that part of their brain. And if we can get that one to lighten up, you'll see a totally different brain scan. So I hope I'm being clear about what I'm saying. But, yeah, for me, it's all parts. And people think I'm obnoxious for that reason.

Dan Harris (37:03)

But, yeah, you don't scan as obnoxious to me. Let me get back to the other point you were making earlier about your beef with Buddhism, as you understand it, is that at least there can be in some precincts of the dharma, a focus on do the work to feel compassion as opposed, you know, do this specific kind of meditation. And people can feel dysfunctional because they're not feeling any compassion, but they're doing all this work. Whereas the work that you would recommend is let's remove the obstacles as opposed to, you know, just grinding away.

Dick Schwartz (37:42)

Transform the obstacles.

Dan Harris (37:43)

Yes, yes. Right.

Dick Schwartz (37:45)

Yeah.

Dan Harris (37:46)

To me, to the extent that I understand any of this, the way it's worked for me personally is both learning to high five or feed my demons while also doing these ancient practices that, in a very awkward, cultish way, it boosts my friendliness quotient over time.

Dick Schwartz (38:05)

Yeah, I don't want to be quite so black and white about it. I did tm, for example, for like, eight years after college and was very insecure, really thought I had no talents and felt a lot of worthlessness from my family, and it was really helpful. And the meditative practice got me more in touch with what I was calling that big self. I wasn't so caught up in all the worthless parts and the parts that were so critical and so on, and I could function much better. And I was using the meditation to stay away from my exile. So they weren't getting the benefit of all this. So I was feeling better, I could function better. I had more compassion for other people. But my exiles were feeling even more abandoned. And it wasn't until I ran into ifs. I mean, I kind of discovered ifs that I realized what I was doing and that I then, you know, I used some of that access to what I had gotten through meditation and then brought that to the exiles and helped them feel the love that I could give them then. So I'm not trying to be so black and white about it, but I'm a crusader for not doing the spiritual bypass and for actually going to these raw places and helping them out of where they're stuck in the past.

Dan Harris (39:38)

So let's talk about the how to here, because as I understand it, the purpose of your new book is, look, IFS is a. You have a lot of faith in it. And I know a lot of people who've gotten a lot out of it as a form of therapy that you do with a trained IFS therapist. But not everybody has access to this for either cost reasons or any other reason. Maybe we don't have time to do it. And so you've developed this workbook that allows us to practice this skill on our own. How could we even start making peace with our parts without a therapist in the room with us?

Dick Schwartz (40:15)

Yeah, so it's taken me this 40 years to actually free myself up, to bring it directly to the public, because it is possible to go to these very scary, raw places through the process of the model. And if you don't have somebody with you who knows what to do when you're in there, it can get very scary. So I've always, until now, shied away from bringing it directly to the public. But in working with that, I realized there's a certain amount of ifs that people can do very safely on their own. They can't do the full monty, and that's why there are therapists. But the workbook is designed to help people get to know and honor and help these protectors trust, self leadership. And that's quite safe. You can do that without a lot of extreme reactions as you go. It's when you start heading toward these exiles that it gets dicey. And, and so the advice in the book is do what you can with your protectors. You run into an exile, let it know you get it, that you, you care about it, you want to help it, and then go find a therapist who can help you do that piece and then come back and there's a lot of exercises for how to maintain that and keep everything going.

Dan Harris (41:45)

Okay, so let's be quite granular, practical with somebody listening to this, who wants to just try it while they're doing their household chores or driving their car listening to this, so they can get a toehold in what we're talking about here. I'll throw something out as a conversation starter where you can push it away and go in whatever direction you want. But you talk about these six steps of find, focus, flesh out, feel toward, befriend and fear. Would that be a good place to start if we want to give people very basic instructions?

Dick Schwartz (42:16)

Very much. And I know you were a good sport last time, but if you're interested, I could do a little piece with one of your protectors so the audience would get a sense of how it goes. Okay, so yeah, Is there a part you'd like to start with?

Dan Harris (42:32)

Well, the part we worked with last time is I call him rj, which is my grandfather's initials, Robert Johnson, who is, I would say the inner critic manager. So we talked to him last time. The other part that I've named maybe closer to an exile. I don't know. You'll tell me where he fits in the taxonomy. I call him Arthur because my great grandfather on the other side of the family. So RJ's from the WASPy Christian side of the family and Arthur's from the Jewish side of the family. Arthur was this hustler who arrived here from Eastern Europe or Russia in the early 1900s and was basically a criminal. Got busted and took his own life in the family home, creating incalculable waves of trauma and that kind of hustler mode, fear based hustling. I really see that in myself. I have a lot of, like, not very rational anxiety around money and achievement and things like that. And so maybe since RJ got the love last time, we can go at Arthur. I don't know where he fits in your taxonomy, though.

Dick Schwartz (43:45)

Well, yeah, he would be a protector and bringing up a topic that's really become big in ifs, which is what we call legacy burdens. So that anxiety, or that how you described him, may well not have come from your life, from things that happened to you, but that you just absorbed through the generations. But we'll find out. We can just check with him and see. So you ready?

Dan Harris (44:14)

Yes. And if you could be clear, because now I'm basically working with a therapist. If you could be clear, as we do this process, how people can do this for themselves, I think that would be really helpful.

Dick Schwartz (44:25)

Yeah, I'll do it with you first. We'll do it pretty briefly, and then I'll describe what we did.

Dan Harris (44:29)

Okay.

Dick Schwartz (44:31)

So you ready?

Dan Harris (44:33)

Yes.

Dick Schwartz (44:34)

So focus on Arthur and find him in your body or around your body. Just find his energy or his voice, however you experience him.

Dan Harris (44:44)

Yeah, it's like malfunctioning gills in the center of my chest. Like this kind of beehive energy above the solar plexus.

Dick Schwartz (44:55)

Okay. And as you notice him there, how do you feel toward him? How do you, Dan, feel toward him? Do you like him? Do you hate him? Do you fear him?

Dan Harris (45:06)

Okay, so the first response is it's uncomfortable and kind of annoying and maybe a little embarrassing that I'm such a striver. I'm so sweaty thirsty, as the kids might say. Over time, I've developed more of an affectionate. All right. Yeah, I appreciate what you're trying to do.

Dick Schwartz (45:25)

So let's. Yeah, let's ask all the parts that are annoyed by him to give us a lot of space to get to know him better and just see if. If you can really just get into that curious but appreciative place with him.

Dan Harris (45:43)

Yes, I can do that.

Dick Schwartz (45:46)

All right, so let him know you feel that way toward him right now and see how he reacts.

Dan Harris (45:51)

Often what I'll say is just thank you.

Dick Schwartz (45:54)

Right. So do that and see if a reaction comes from him. And don't think. Just kind of wait and see if you get some kind of reaction in there.

Dan Harris (46:04)

Yeah, the. The unfiltered kind of dialogue I heard was him saying, like, I got you good. Like, I'm looking out for you.

Dick Schwartz (46:15)

How did it feel to hear that?

Dan Harris (46:17)

It's great. It's like a buddy doing me a favor.

Dick Schwartz (46:20)

So tell him you really appreciate It. And ask him what else he wants you to know about himself. Just very open ended, curious question and wait for the answer. Don't think.

Dan Harris (46:34)

No. The answer that came without thinking was I do what I have to do.

Dick Schwartz (46:42)

Okay. Yeah. And ask him more about what he's afraid would happen if he didn't do that.

Dan Harris (46:50)

It's funny, there was a movie, God, I'm forgetting the name of this movie. Came out like the mid 2000s and there was a line in it like, it's hard out here for a pimp. You know, it's like, you know, I'm on the streets hustling and, you know, I'm doing what I have to do. That's the energy I get.

Dick Schwartz (47:09)

Uh huh. Okay, good. Maybe at this point you can ask him if he does carry somebody else's energy. Just ask that question and wait and see what happens.

Dan Harris (47:25)

I don't know if this is authentically what Arthur has to say or my intellect intervening, but to the extent that I understand the history of where Arthur came from.

Dick Schwartz (47:43)

Okay, but that is your intellect.

Dan Harris (47:45)

Okay, there we go.

Dick Schwartz (47:46)

We're going to ask that thinking part to give us a lot of space and we're going to go back to Arthur and we're going to ask him if he carries somebody else's energy. And don't think. Just wait and see if an answer comes. If no answer comes, that's fine.

Dan Harris (48:03)

No clear answer came.

Dick Schwartz (48:05)

Okay, that's fine. So go back to him again and ask what he's afraid would happen if he didn't do this job.

Dan Harris (48:17)

Destitution.

Dick Schwartz (48:19)

Okay, so he feels like he's keeping you from destitution.

Dan Harris (48:23)

Yes.

Dick Schwartz (48:24)

And how do you feel toward him as you get that?

Dan Harris (48:26)

That's what his belief is, increasing affection.

Dick Schwartz (48:30)

So show that to him. Yeah. And ask him more about why he thinks you would be destitute without him doing this.

Dan Harris (48:42)

That's because he saw it happen in his own life.

Dick Schwartz (48:46)

Okay. Yeah. So this is his energy and he. And this part carries Arthur's energy. So let him know you get that, that he's been coming down to keep you from destitution and that he actually saw that happen to people he cared about and maybe to himself.

Dan Harris (49:12)

It's not theoretical.

Dick Schwartz (49:14)

That's right. It's real. Yeah, yeah. Ask him how old he thinks you are. And again, don't think, just ask.

Dan Harris (49:30)

I don't get a clear answer to that.

Dick Schwartz (49:32)

Okay. All right. So now that you have heard all this from him and you do have great affection for him, ask him if there's anything he'd like to do different or if he would like to not have to worry so much about protecting you this way. Or anything he'd like you to know about any shifts he'd like to make.

Dan Harris (50:05)

It's funny, again, I don't know if this is him talking or my question, capital S Self talking or some other part. But yeah, I get the vibe that he would like to put the burden down and help me avoid what he went through.

Dick Schwartz (50:24)

Okay, so we do need to know if it's coming from him. So again, ask that thinking part to just give you a lot of space again. And ask him directly if he would like to unload this burden of it. Of Arthur's energy. Ask this part if he'd like to not have to carry this.

Dan Harris (50:57)

I think the answer is yes. And I want to be completely honest about. I'm not sure I've been able to get the thinking aspects of my mind. Also, there's the self consciousness too, because I think it's tricky to do the work in public.

Dick Schwartz (51:16)

Totally. I totally get that too. And we don't have to do much more. But let him know that if he does want to unload that there's a way that that can happen so that he can do something he would rather do inside of you. We don't have to do it today, and I'm happy to help you do it at some other point privately, but just let him know that that's a possibility. Whenever he's ready.

Dan Harris (51:47)

Coming up. Dick talks about whether it's possible to transform the intentions of your various parts. How to operationalize ifs into your daily life. Some more nitty gritty on ifs terminology. And then we get into the link between ifs and psychedelics. Psst.

Unknown Speaker (52:06)

Here's a list of reasons to use Instacart. The game is on. The game just ended. The next game is on. Life is busy. But with Instacart, you really don't ever have to leave the couch. Do with this information what you will. So download the Instacart app and get whatever you crave for the game and whatever else you need delivered in as fast as 30 minutes. Plus, enjoy. $0 delivery fees on your first three grocery orders. Instacart. We're here. Service fees apply. Three orders in 14 days excludes restaurants.

Dan Harris (52:39)

This is pure intellect coming in now, I think. But it's something I've thought a lot about, is can you have. I like that. I like that. I'm ambitious and have a lot of energy and a lot of ideas. And can. Can you have the motivation switch? And I know it's not an overnight thing, but over time, from fear of destitution to love.

Dick Schwartz (53:08)

That's right. That's what we do. So if he could give up this terror he carries, then he would transform the part of you that carries, that will transform and become a helper, an ally in your goal of leading from love. And yourself knows how to do that. And these parts would come to trust you to lead more without having to strategize and be so slick in how they would do it.

Dan Harris (53:38)

So the way this has worked for me, this is just my experience is that developing more affection, high fiving the demons, has not made it so that the terror never comes. I run a small business. It's a rolling existential crisis. Every once in a while, I'll get an email that has, let's say, scary implications for the balance sheet. And the terror will come. So it's not as if I've transformed the part in an irrevocable way, but I think, generally speaking, I have developed a reflex some significant percentage of the time to see it for what it is and to talk to myself with some warmth.

Dick Schwartz (54:22)

Yeah. And that's a really good step. But I just want you to know that it is possible to transform the terror, to not have that reaction ever. Because. Ever. Because the unburdening process actually does that. So it's a possibility. And I. I know that feeling about the small business precipice.

Dan Harris (54:50)

Okay. So we did. We did a little bit of. We gave people a little bit of a taste of what it's like to work with a IFS therapist. How can we operationalize that in our own lives? Sans therapist.

Dick Schwartz (55:05)

Yeah. So the. The book has these exercises where you would do basically what I had you do. And I'll go through the steps we just went through. So the first of those F words is to focus on the part. And then I had you do that on Arthur and then find it in your body, around your body. So that's the second F, which you did. And people can do this pretty readily on their own. And then there's that question of how do you feel toward it? So we don't let you interact with it until you do feel some of what you felt, which is minimally curious to get to know it. But you were ahead of the game. You felt appreciation for it and caring for it. You know, you had parts that still had an attitude about it, but we got those out. And so you could be very loving to it. And, you know, it's a testimony to your Buddhist practice that you can have that kind of compassion for parts that before you didn't like. And so I had you let him know that you felt that way toward him. And we did that for a while. So that's another step is befriend it. The F is in the middle of the word. So we're. We're helping you befriend this Arthur part. And you'd already started on that path, and we had you do that until there did seem to be a trust and a connection in your relationship with him. And then I just had you start asking, what does he want you to know about himself? And you got more. I don't know if it's more than you've got in the past, but you got some information about how he does carry this terror about destitution. And. And it's because he saw it happen in the past and that this part carries his energy and isn't, you know, wouldn't mind not having to carry that. So all of that was part of just asking these questions and waiting for the answer and in the process, keeping that thinking part from doing the answering so that you're actually. The answers are coming from that place in your body.

Dan Harris (57:25)

Do you recommend that people do this work? And again, now we're talking about outside of a clinical or therapeutic session, that people do this work as a kind of seated meditation or can it be an on the go, free range thing that happens anytime you notice a part grabbing the steering wheel.

Dick Schwartz (57:47)

Exactly. It becomes a life practice. So, you know, if I'm out in the. In the world and somebody says something that triggers me, I'll. If I. On a good day, I'll do what we call a U turn in my focus. I'll say time out for a second and I'll focus inside. I'll notice the protector that's coming up to defend me, and then I'll get curious about it. I'll ask it to separate, and I'll. And I can do this in like 10 seconds, and I'll ask about what it's protecting, and I'll learn about the exile that got triggered by this person. And then depending on the context, I'll either just ask them to give me a little space so I can stay, so myself can stay and handle the person, or if I'm with my wife or, you know, somebody who I can be vulnerable with. I'll speak for the parts that got triggered. I'll say, when you said that Thing I felt this protector come up and wanted to say this and I knew that wouldn't help. So I learned it's protecting this other part and I'm going to do some work so I can heal that one. But I just wanted you to know that what you said had that impact on me. And I would say it from that tone of voice rather than why did you say this awful thing?

Dan Harris (59:12)

So just, I'm trying to think about how I can put this in the simplest possible terms for people who want to do this, either in, you know, as a seated formal session or like a, as you said, a life practice. It's about just working your way through these Fs of find focus, which seem to be quite similar. Just identifying what's happening, fleshing out and feeling towards seem about like getting curious. Understanding befriending is the penultimate F, the F being in the middle, like really having a warm relationship. And then the final F is around fear, which is kind of understanding like what is the fear that this part is carrying?

Dick Schwartz (59:55)

Exactly.

Dan Harris (59:55)

So it's really, if you wanted to even whittle it down, it's just about, okay, can I be mindful and self aware of what's happening right now? Can I enter into a friendly dialogue with it and let the, let the emotion kind of metabolize in that way?

Dick Schwartz (60:14)

Yeah, but it's, you know, mindfulness is a good first step, but for the difference is ifs you become not just an observer of your thoughts and emotions, you become an active inner parent or inner attachment figure or inner leader. And you go to them with this, just what you did with Arthur just now. And you, you express love to them and you help them. And as you do that, you learn that most of them are very young. They're all, even these big time protectors are usually no older than a teenager. And they're in over their heads like parentified children. And they're waiting for some grownup to come along and say, you don't have to do this, I can handle things, just let me run things now.

Dan Harris (61:06)

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. The executive coach with whom I've been working for many years. I don't know if we've ever talked about ifs, but he's very clearly influenced deeply by it. His name is Jerry Colonna and he often talks about the inner five year old. You know, these neurotic programs we developed as five. Pick an age that are trying to protect us. I also want to say on a practical tip that I believe you've also recorded Guided meditations. You spell them out in the book, but I believe they're also recordings of some guided meditations that really walk people through these.

Dick Schwartz (61:42)

Yeah, very much. I can't remember if we've done that with the workbook, but there on Sounds True published something called Greater Than the Sum of the Parts, which are a collection of my meditations along these lines. And the book no Bad Parts that I wrote a few years ago, the audio version of that has a lot of these meditations too.

Dan Harris (62:05)

And this workbook has them written out like there's an inner critic meditation, et cetera, et cetera.

Dick Schwartz (62:12)

Exactly. That's right. Yeah.

Dan Harris (62:14)

Right. So again, proving the point that while it's great if you have an IFS therapist you can go to, but if you don't have the time or the inclination or the money, there are ways I can listen to Dick Schwartz guide me in meditation, or I can read the meditation instructions and do them for myself. I can even just listen to this conversation and start doing a rough version in my own life.

Dick Schwartz (62:36)

That's right. Just the act of separating from these protective parts and getting access to yourself changes people's identity, changes their self concept. To know that, you know, we work with offenders, for example, we're doing a lot of work. We're going to be doing a lot more. But we've been doing work in prisons, and for some of the inmates to learn that the part of them that did the harmful thing isn't who they are, and that part isn't even who they think it is, it's not pure evil at all. It's part that was trying to protect them and that there is this other person inside of them who's pure goodness. I mean, that by itself has a huge impact on how you view yourself.

Dan Harris (63:22)

Yeah. There was something you said earlier that I just want to make sure in our remaining time that I get some clarity on. If I'm understanding you correctly, part of your sensitivity about teaching people how to do ifs outside of a clinical setting is that they might bump up against an exile. And if that's true, they should. They should actually go see a therapist. Because if I'm understanding you correctly, this is really about working with protector parts like a manager or a firefighter, that it might be too hot to get in touch with an exile. Am I understanding that correctly?

Dick Schwartz (63:56)

Yeah, pretty close. So inevitably you will, because that question, that last f question of what's the part afraid would happen if it didn't protect you. This way, many people will learn about some vulnerable exile that it protects. So you will run into exiles. What we're saying is, before you go on all the healing steps for an exile, of which there are about five, don't try to do that alone. Don't do this by yourself. But it's fine to show a lot of compassion and love to that exile. Like you said, you still get this terror reaction, but you've learned to not be overtaken by it. You've learned that it's a part and that you can reassure it. You can love it like a good parent. So that's one of the steps in working with an exile. But then at some point with the therapist, we would have you ask it where it's stuck in the past and show you what happened and let you feel how bad it was. So the part feels witnessed. And then would literally have you, Dan, go into that scene and be with that boy in the way he needed somebody back there, and then take him out to a safe place, which might just be to your lap or to your house, and then help him unload these extreme beliefs and emotions he got from that terror scene. And then. And there's a couple other steps, but it's that. That's the delicate part that some people can in an amazing way do on their own, but some people will get into trouble if they try and do it on their own.

Dan Harris (65:44)

I want to get some clarity for myself, and hopefully this leads to some clarity for the audience on what, How I can understand the difference between the protector parts and the exile parts. So in my case, Arthur, this kind of slightly scammy, hustler, ambitious character that I see in myself, he's a manager or a protector part. But the exile is the fear.

Dick Schwartz (66:11)

That's right. The exile is the terror. Okay, yeah. Well, let me phrase it differently. Like, Arthur isn't the sliminess. That's the energy of your. Was it your uncle or who was it?

Dan Harris (66:25)

Great great grandfather.

Dick Schwartz (66:27)

Oh, your great great grandfather. That's the energy that part of you carries, but the part itself isn't him. And that's an important distinction. And then the exile is a young, vulnerable part of you that got terrified at some point, probably in your childhood, and carries that terror. But it can unload that terror once it feels safe.

Dan Harris (66:52)

Right. So just to restate that, Arthur may carry some greasy energy, but essentially he's just trying to be protective. That's the essence of him, and that's.

Dick Schwartz (67:05)

The essence of him. And once he unburdens, he'll transform into just being an advisor or different kind of protective.

Dan Harris (67:14)

Yes. Yeah, yeah. In our remaining minutes, one last thing I want to ask you about is the book talks about. If I. If. Correct me if I'm wrong, either the book talks about, or you've been talking more publicly about, or both psychedelics, and I'm interested in psychedelics, have been too afraid to really do them. I've done some mdma, which I don't. Is slightly different in my mind from what I would consider to be the, you know, the psychedelics that most people think about, like psilocybin and. And LSD or ayahuasca. I've done MDMA mostly just recreationally, and I think, you know, you have to be careful, but for me, it's. It's been really helpful. But what to you is the link between ifs and psychedelics? And how can they be mutually communicative?

Dick Schwartz (68:01)

Yeah, so. And I agree with that distinction between MDMA and some of the others. And I'm most familiar with ketamine. We actually do retreats for people with ketamine and IFS combined. But I have some experience also with psilocybin and ayahuasca. And a lot of what they do is kind of put the managers to sleep, which then when they go to sleep, you access a lot of self automatically. And when you're in that state, it's a big invitation for a lot of your exiles to come in who can't get access to you otherwise because of these protectors. And so in, you know, 15 minutes with somebody when they're coming back from a ketamine journey, I can do a huge piece of work with their exiles that would take maybe five sessions to get to otherwise. So that's the big benefit that I see in the combination. I was very skeptical initially when somebody invited me to do it, and I thought, you know, we do fine without that. But, yeah, I've been impressed with how much we can. How much it kind of accelerates the work.

Dan Harris (69:21)

Are there risks?

Dick Schwartz (69:23)

Yes, there are definitely risks. And so we're very careful about it. So before anybody does the medicine, we spend a number of sessions just asking for permission from their protectors and going over all the fears the protectors have about letting them do this. And if the protectors don't give permission, we just don't have them do it. So the protectors all know in advance what is about to happen. And what we found is, as we do that solicitous solicitation of the protectors beforehand. People don't have the kind of backlash reactions that occur if you don't get permission because. And I found this the hard way. Early in the early days of doing this work, people would come in and say, I've got this terror, like you just said. And it's in my gut. I thought, okay, let's go heal that. So I would get them to focus on that and go to that right away. And then after the session, they'd have these huge backlash reactions. You know, I had a client get into a car accident, just didn't see the car or leaving my office or spike a fever or. And minimally, these critics would come and attack them for having let this happen. And what I learned was we were bypassing the protectors who spent decades keeping all that contained. And then I walk in and rip open the door. And then they say, oh, screw you. I'm not going to let this person stay with you anymore. And they pulled the client out. And so in general, before we go to exiles, before we do psychedelics, we. We get permission.

Dan Harris (71:15)

There are two questions I always ask in closing. One is, is there something you were hoping we would get to that we haven't gotten to?

Dick Schwartz (71:22)

Not a bit. I've loved this conversation.

Dan Harris (71:24)

Me, too. Finally, can you just remind everybody of the name of the new book and any other book you've put out there or any other resources you've put into the universe that we should be aware of.

Dick Schwartz (71:35)

The new book is called Internal Family Systems Workbook. And let me mention the other two books that just came out that are about ifs I didn't write. And again, one is Ralph Outshining Trauma. It's a book I like a lot because it's about Buddhism and ifs. And then the other one is Gabriel Bernstein's new book, which will be out next month called Self Help. Both of them, the authors were extremely disclosive about their very troubled pasts, and it's kind of very gripping reading. And then the other book that people like for the public is no Bad Parts that I wrote about three years ago.

Dan Harris (72:27)

Yeah, I've seen it on my wife's bedside. Dick Schwartz, thank you very much. Always a pleasure to talk to you. Really appreciate your time and your work.

Dick Schwartz (72:37)

Same here, Dan. Really enjoyed it.

Dan Harris (72:43)

Thanks again to Dick Schwartz. Always great to talk to him. I will drop a link in the show notes to his first appearance on this show. Also, don't forget, Dick's got this new book out called the Internal Family Systems Workbook, which comes from our friends over at Sounds True, the great publisher. They wanted us to tell you that Dick's new book is part of the Inner Workbooks series, which currently includes a book by former podcast guest Deb Dana called the Nervous System Workbook and another one called the Healing Anxiety Workbook. As always, don't forget to check out danharris.com where you can get ad free versions of this and every other podcast you you can also get cheat sheets which include a full transcript and a summary of the key takeaways. And you can join me for live guided meditation sessions and ask me questions. Final thing to do here is to thank everybody who works so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson, Caroline Keenan and Eleanor Vasily. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our Production manager, Marissa Schneiderman is our Circumstance senior producer, DJ Kashmir is our Executive producer, and Nick Thorburn from the band Islands wrote our theme.

Unknown Speaker (74:08)

If you're a parent or share a fridge with someone, Instacart is about to make grocery shopping so much easier because with family carts you can share a cart with your partner and each add the items you want. So odds are together you'll remember everything you need and never eat milkless cereal again. Minimize weekly shop stress with family carts. Instacart. We're here. Download the app today. Enjoy. $0 delivery fees on your first 3 orders. Service fees apply for 3 orders in 14 days. Excludes restaurant.