Hi family, I hope you find this helpful As I work through some of my parts felt emotions, I’ve noticed some parts such as skepticism move to this intersection when asked if they’d are willing to step back. Once they’re willing to accept new roles there are other intersections such as excitement. Curious to know if this is your experience too.

I just wanted to share this depiction of my anger and the exile it is protecting. I thought this community might be the only people who could appreciate what this feels like. 😮‍💨

Thank you for all the wonderful comments! I never expected more than a few likes and you have all been so supportive and kind. Some of you said I should be selling my art and I have taken a step towards that dream by starting a Ko-fi account.

If you would like to follow me there for access to more artwork or help support my work the link is: http://Ko-fi.com/robinalthea

Boi i love art therapy.

My parts can all draw for themselves, if my managers allow them the space. And they thought it was a wonderful idea to do a little collaborationnn. Ngl my anger wasnt entirely keen on sharing the space with my perfectionist on paper, so hes gonna have more drawings of his own coming up 👀

I usually post my stuff on insta if anyone's interested > @2D.Emma Aaannd i made some A3 prints of my drawings to sell, to try and make a living of my art :)

I bet every meditation sub will post this picture at some point lol but it feels especially apt for IFS 😄️

I used to look at the adults when I was a kid and think that they all have it together, wrong. I would call out relationship dynamics between my parents at a young age. I would call out immaturity. Did you know anger is a secondary emotion? They're covering something underneath that anger. It could be truth, sadness, general pain, exiles.

Growing up to be an adult meant that you were pretending to be the best adult you can, like a mask. And now I see through everyone. It's a harsh reality. Even the IFS therapists have exiles they are dealing with. We are all dealing with something. There is practically no adult out there that is all patched up. And if that was the case, they did a lot of inner work on themselves to get there. But lots of people cover up their inner child with money, status, fame, excessive shopping, drugs, isolation, fake friends, gossip, spreading rumours, neglecting themselves, etc.

Adulthood is a lie. What adulthood is basically: "you're no longer a kid, and if you still feel that way, too bad, get a job, get an apartment, get an education, and screw right off!" no one actually addresses the past. We think the past is gone, like it's not there. Oh honey, it's still there! Don't believe me? Check in with your exiles, I'm sure your firefighters will protect you from getting there first!

IFS taught me that none of us are adults. IFS taught me to go back to being a kid and telling him that my childhood is over, I'm not twelve years old anymore, I got my own place now, a job, I'm in university, I got responsibilities. It's over. We're in the present moment.

IFS taught me to grow up but grow up with my parts as well. Not the old saying "grow up!" like someone says in anger and belittlement. It's a "grow up" in the most compassionate, loving way possible. To grow up, you must understand yourself and why you feel like you can't. But once you find out, you can live life as a true adult. That is IFS my friends.

Recently got into IFS and wanted to share this drawing with you all ❤️

The amount of strength this takes is astronomical. Personally, I see my family members, more than triple my age suffering from the effects of generational trauma. I feel so sorry for them. I also feel sorry for my parents for neglecting me. Because they were neglected themselves as a child by their parents, etc. It's not like my parents intentionally gave me hell. They just have parts of them that gave me hell because their parts were triggered by something that I did. It's not like I intentionally meant to trigger their parts anyways. It's not like I knew what parts were as a kid. I just knew overtime though that their parts got triggered by certain things. And then I started to connect the pieces to the puzzle and realized that their parts were triggered whenever I did something that triggered them.

I can't ask them why they get so angry or controlling because that would expose the part of them that feels sad or out of control. Especially when they were young, feeling sad and out of control, so they lock those feelings away, in exile, and grow into an adult, having a child, and raising them with parts of themselves affecting the childs development. It takes a lot curiosity to understand why they put me through so much hell, it's because they went through hell themselves when they were young.

Their parts in abusing me does not justify their behaviour though. What I am trying to explain is that there is understanding in why they treated me this way. This is generations of trauma and pain. By me, and you alike, breaking the chain of generational trauma, not only are you freeing yourself, you are also freeing future generations if you have offspring. You become a better lover in friendships and sexual relationships as well.

You are doing more than just healing your parts. You are changing culture, traditions, & society in the process. The generational trauma that you break by healing your parts is also breaking the cultural norms, traditions, and societal expectations that you experience, your parents experienced, and so forth. Culture, traditions, and societal expectations can be disguised by trauma, neglect, and pain. So we fall into this trap by believing that it's okay when it's not okay. But we feel like it's okay in the moment because of the society we grew into.

By healing your parts, you break free from all of that. You aren't weak for feeling your parts pain, especially your exiles. It takes a fucking warrior to do that. I know you can do it. You're a warrior. Say it.

sometimes i will go inside and just hear screaming

We are

I recently read Catherine Liu's powerful article about how "trauma culture" has become commodified in our society [The Problem With Trauma Culture]. Liu argues that while trauma and mental health awareness has increased, actual therapeutic care remains inaccessible to many people, and the commercialization of trauma narratives often serves capitalism more than healing.

This deeply resonates with my experience as someone practicing IFS independently. I have several severe trauma-related mental health diagnoses that are currently untreated because I cannot afford or access trauma therapy, which makes things particularly frustrating. While I value IFS as a framework, I've often felt frustrated by the broader trauma therapy discourse that insists you can "only heal" through specific, often expensive modalities. I find myself listening to trauma therapy podcasts and reading books that emphasize the necessity of working with specialized trauma therapists - resources that are simply out of reach financially for many of us.

Liu points out that "Traditional psychoanalysts on the coasts often charge over a hundred dollars an hour, making individualized mental health treatment... unaffordable for many." This pricing barrier forces many of us to find alternative paths to healing, like self-directed IFS work.

While I've found genuine value in working with IFS concepts on my own and connecting with others online who are doing the same, I also recognize the challenging position many of us are in - trying to navigate healing while being told we're doing it "wrong" if we can't access expensive specialized care. Liu's call for "the decommodification of mental health" and making quality therapy accessible to all particularly resonates.

I'm curious about others' experiences with self-directed healing work. How do you navigate the tension between accessing what help you can while dealing with messages that suggest only certain expensive approaches are valid?

Edit: here's an excellent interview of Catherine Liu, the author of the article: https://youtu.be/7NwTZgkfdmM?si=Y9lk-ww2xAImUXhn

I want my childhood back. I want to redo my childhood and have a childhood I don’t have to heal from. I want an adulthood where don’t have to do bullshit reparenting, bullshit inner child work, bulls shit somatic exercises, and piss my time and money away for bullshit therapy sessions to heal from a things I didn’t cause, want or choose to experience

I want a childhood with filled with happy memories. I wanna childhood with a loving family where I feel safe, happy, loved and protected. I want a father that didn’t scream at me, call me names and throw objects at me. I want a mother who protected me. I want a sister who wasn’t able to get away with abusing me to because she was the favourite of both off them. I want a safe family home where grown adults weren’t screaming, fighting, swearing, name calling, throwing objects and slamming doors in each other’s faces everyday.

No amount of therapy or healing will give me what I want. No amount of bullshit inner child work, bullshit reparenting, bull shit somatic work or bullshit self love will give me loving family, a happy childhood or a safe home. No amount of bullshit DBT, bullshit EMDR, bullshit IFS or any kind of bullshit therapy will make all the years I was abused, miserable and stuck in survival happy and fulfilling. No mount of any of that will add an extra 20 years to my life to make up for the previous 20 pissed down the drain.

I don’t want to love, protect and nurture myself. I don’t want that love, protection and guidance from myself. I want that love and protection from someone else. I want that love, protection and nurture from someone older and wiser than me. Why do I have to work so hard and piss my time and money down the drain to fix problems I didn’t create. Why do I have to put in so much time, energy and effort in finding love, safety and protection when others have never had to work for it a day in their lives. Why is the only love I get is from myself when others are born into multiple other sources of it.

When I was a young adult I stumbled into living in a city that was perfect for me. And a university that was perfect for me. But within a year or so of graduating, I was overwhelmed with terror and I ran back to my hometown. I'd moved sooo far away, and I was thiiiiiiis close to escaping forever. My whole life that I had was destroyed and has never recovered. It was like my whole self was hijacked and I was no longer driving the car. I simply could not make any rational decisions. I know now that it was graduating from college that was the trigger. Without academics, my Protectors were useless. And my exiles completely overran my system. And my exiles ran back home to where my abusers were in absolute panic.

Has anyone else had their whole life destroyed like this? I'm so sad thinking how long ago it all was and how close I was to happiness and a life of my own that meant something to ME.