Healing Trauma in IFS Therapy: Unblending from Exiles

This is one part in a series that is powerful, illuminating, compassionate and wise, and deeply healing and transformative. Again and again I am growing so clear on the crucial missing pieces to many years on my own path of sobriety, inner child work, and seeking to break the generational cycles of addictions and pain and trauma for myself and my children. This is among many other links which nails what I needed and what my family needed and what was tragically lacking. I am also incredibly heartened and grateful today for how it is that addressing and treating addictions and depression and anxiety and all of the many faces of trauma is expanding and evolving. There is great hope for us all. — Molly 

Welcome to Part 4 of my series: What is IFS? Internal Family Systems Therapy, Explained. In this video I share how IFS Therapy understands trauma through the frame of parts work and uses the techniques of unblending from parts to help heal trauma and gain freedom from "emotional flashbacks." I also discuss the IFS concept of exile parts and describe the relationship between protectors and exiles. I also provide a brief description of the neuroscience of trauma, trauma flashbacks and why traumatic experiences can still feel so present in our bodies, years after the traumatic event. Finally, I explain how once we have been able to connect with our "big S self," our "true self" is able to go beyond managing our emotional reactions to actually healing our trauma by caring for our traumatized exile parts.

#toriolds #partswork #ifs #trauma

00:00 Understanding Trauma Responses From a “Parts” Perspective

02:01 What are Exiles?

03:00 The Relationship Between Protectors and Exiles

03:31 The Neuroscience of Traumatic Memories

05:54 What are Trauma Flashbacks?

10:14 A Parts Work Approach to Trauma

15:07 IFS Techniques for Unblending From Parts and Healing Trauma

18:24 Discriminating Between Protector Parts and the True Self 

Please go here for more:

EXCELLENT — Chris Hedges: The Impending Collapse of US Empire

This is an excellent and deeply important article by Chris Hedges. Chris is among those of the highest integrity who have been warning us and reporting on the collapse of the American Empire for decades. He embodies what Chris refers to as a "profound commitment to truth," and no matter where the threads of truth lead. Chris Hedges is among the courageous independent journalists, truth-tellers and wisdom-keepers, activists and authors who are national and international treasures. And yet his voice is never heard on corporate funded mainstream media. And I do mean never. There is good reason why — he exposes the longstanding greed and toxicity, the dangers and brutality, the chilling reality that is at the core of Empire. Without turning to independent resources like Chris Hedges, we Americans remain ignorant and unknowing participants in our own demise. This must change. We must join Chris Hedges and other courageous human beings by deeply informing ourselves and through our strong actions and continuous voices of truth rooted in the consciousness of a highest good for us all. Otherwise, and in the words of Emma Goldman, we will continue to be plagued by the violence which threatens and imperils us all: "Ignorance is the most violent element in society." — Molly

Saddam Hussein’s statue toppled in Baghdad shortly after the invasion of Iraq in 2003.(DoD, Public domain, Wikimedia Commons)

By Chris Hedges

The public perception of the American empire, at least to those within the United States who have never seen the empire dominate and exploit the “wretched of the earth,” is radically different from reality. 

These manufactured illusions, ones Joseph Conrad wrote so presciently about, posit that the empire is a force for good. The empire, we are told, fosters democracy and liberty. It spreads the benefits of “Western civilization.”

These are deceptions repeated ad nauseam by a compliant media and mouthed by politicians, academics and the powerful. But they are lies, as all of us who have spent years reporting overseas understand.

Matt Kennard in his book The Racket — where he reports from Haiti, Bolivia, Turkey, Palestine, Egypt, Tunisia, Mexico, Colombia and many other countries — rips back the veil. He exposes the hidden machinery of empire. He details its brutality, mendacity, cruelty and its dangerous self-delusions. 

In the late stage of empire, the image sold to a gullible public begins to entrance the mandarins of empire. They make decisions based not on reality, but on their distorted visions of reality, one coloured by their own propaganda. 

Matt refers to this as “the racket.” Blinded by hubris and power they come to believe their deceptions, propelling the empire towards collective suicide. They retreat into a fantasy where hard and unpleasant facts no longer intrude. 

They replace diplomacy, multilateralism and politics with unilateral threats and the blunt instrument of war. They become the purblind architects of their own destruction.

Matt writes: 

“A couple of years after my initiation at The Financial Times a few things started to become clearer. I came to realise a difference between myself and the rest of the people staffing the racket — the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) workers, the economists in the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and so on.” 

He continues,  

“While I was coming to understand how the racket really worked, I started to see them as willing dupes. There was no doubt they seemed to believe in the virtue of the mission; they imbibed all the theories that were meant to dress up global exploitation in the language of ‘development’ and ‘progress’. I saw this with American ambassadors in Bolivia and Haiti, and with countless other functionaries I interviewed.”

“They genuinely believe the myths,” he concludes, 

“and of course are paid handsomely to do so. To help these agents of the racket get up in the morning there also exists, throughout the West, a well-stocked army of intellectuals whose sole purpose is to make theft and brutality acceptable to the general population of the U.S. and its racketeering allies.”

The United States carried out one of the greatest strategic blunders in its history, one that sounded the death knell of the empire, when it invaded and occupied for two decades Afghanistan and Iraq. 

The architects of the war in the George W. Bush White House, and the array of useful idiots in the press and academia who were cheerleaders for it, knew very little about the countries being invaded. They believed their technological superiority made them invincible. 

They were blindsided by the ferocious blowback and armed resistance that led to their defeat. This was something those of us who knew the Middle East — I was the Middle East bureau chief for The New York Times, speak Arabic and reported from the region for seven years — predicted.

But those intent on war preferred a comforting fantasy. They stated, and probably believed, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, although they had no valid evidence to support this claim. 

They insisted that democracy would be implanted in Baghdad and spread across the Middle East. They assured the public that U.S. troops would be greeted by grateful Iraqis and Afghans as liberators. They promised that oil revenues would cover the cost of reconstruction. 

They insisted that the bold and quick military strike — “shock and awe” — would restore American hegemony in the region and dominance in the world. It did the opposite. As Zbigniew Brzezi?ski noted, this “unilateral war of choice against Iraq precipitated a widespread delegitimation of U.S. foreign policy.”

Matt Kennard. (Twitter/X)

The War State

America since the end of World War II has become a stratocracy — government dominated by the military. There is a constant preparation for war. The war machine’s massive budgets are sacrosanct. Its billions of dollars in waste and fraud are ignored. 

Its military fiascos in Southeast Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East disappear into the vast black hole of historical amnesia. This amnesia, which means there is never accountability, licences the war machine to leap from military debacle to debacle while it economically disembowels the country. 

The militarists win every election. They cannot lose. It is impossible to vote against them. The war state is a Götterdämmerung, as Dwight Macdonald writes, “without the gods.”

Nov. 24, 2004: U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld applauding President George W. Bush during his remarks at the Pentagon on a military spending bill. (DoD) 

Since the end of the Second World War, the federal government has spent more than half its tax dollars on past, current and future military operations. It is the largest single sustaining activity of the government. 

Military systems are sold before they are produced with guarantees that huge cost overruns will be covered.

Foreign aid is contingent on buying U.S. weapons. Egypt, which receives some $1.3 billion in foreign military financing, is required to devote it to buying and maintaining U.S. weapons systems. 

Israel, meanwhile, has received $158 billion in bilateral assistance from the U.S. since 1949, almost all of it since 1971 in the form of military aid, with most of it going towards arms purchases from American weapons manufacturers.

The U.S. public funds the research, development and building of weapons systems and then buys these same weapons systems on behalf of foreign governments. It is a circular system of corporate welfare. 

In the year to September 2022, the U.S. spent $877 billion on the military. This was more than the next 10 countries — including China, Russia, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom —  combined. 

These huge military expenditures, along with the rising costs of a for-profit healthcare system, have driven the U.S. national debt to over $31 trillion, nearly $5 trillion more than the U.S.’ entire Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

This imbalance is not sustainable, especially once the dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency. As of January 2023, the U.S. spent a record $213 billion servicing the interest on its national debt.

The Empire at Home

The military machine, by diverting funds and resources to endless war, disembowels and impoverishes the nation at home, as Matt’s reporting from Washington, Baltimore and New York illustrates.

The cost to the public — socially, economically, politically and culturally — is catastrophic. Workers are reduced to subsistence level and preyed upon by corporations that have privatised every facet of society from health care and education to the prison-industrial complex. 

Militarists divert funds from social and infrastructure programs. They pour money into research and development of weapons systems and neglect renewable energy technologies. Bridges, roads, electrical grids and levees collapse. Schools decay. Domestic manufacturing declines. Our public transportation system is a shambles. 

Militarised police gun down mostly unarmed, poor people of colour and fill a system of penitentiaries and jails that hold a staggering 25 percent of the world’s prisoners although Americans represent only 5 percent of the global population. 

Cities, deindustrialized, are in ruins. Opioid addiction, suicide, mass shootings, depression and morbid obesity plague a population that has fallen into profound despair.  

Militarised societies are fertile ground for demagogues. Militarists, like demagogues, see other nations and cultures in their own image — threatening and aggressive. They seek only domination. They peddle illusions of a return to a mythical golden age of total power and unlimited prosperity. 

The deep disillusionment and anger that led to Donald Trump’s election — a reaction to the corporate coup d’état and the poverty afflicting at least half of the country — have destroyed the myth of a functioning democracy.

As Matt notes: 

“The American elite that has grown fat from looting abroad is also fighting a war at home. From the 1970s onwards, the same white-collar mobsters have been winning a war against the people of the US, in the form of a massive, underhand con. They have slowly but surely managed to sell off much of what the American people used to own under the guise of various fraudulent ideologies such as the ‘free market’. This is the ‘American way’, a giant swindle, a grand hustle.”

He continues, 

“In this sense, the victims of the racket are not just in Port-au-Prince and Baghdad; they are also in Chicago and New York City. The same people that devise the myths about what we do abroad have also built up a similar ideological system that legitimises theft at home; theft from the poorest, by the richest. The poor and working people of Harlem have more in common with the poor and working people of Haiti than they do with their elites, but this has to be obscured for the racket to work.” 

“Many actions taken by the US government, in fact, habitually harm the poorest and most destitute of its citizens,” he concludes. “The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) is a good example. It came into force in January 1994 and was a fantastic opportunity for US business interests, because markets were opened up for an investment and export bonanza. Simultaneously, thousands of US workers lost their jobs to workers in Mexico where their wages could be beaten down by even poorer people.”  

Self-Immolation

“Collateral Crucifixion” mural created by the artist duo Captain Borderline on the side of a house in Berlin, April 2021. (Singlespeedfahrer, Wikimedia Commons, CC0)

The public, bombarded with war propaganda, cheers on their self-immolation. It revels in the despicable beauty of U.S. military prowess. It speaks in the thought-terminating clichés spewed out by mass culture and mass media. It imbibes the illusion of omnipotence and wallows in self-adulation. 

The mantra of the militarised state is national security. If every discussion begins with a question of national security, every answer includes force or the threat of force. The preoccupation with internal and external threats divides the world into friend and foe, good and evil.

Those such as Julian Assange who expose the crimes and suicidal folly of empire are ruthlessly persecuted. The truth, a truth Matt uncovers, is bitter and hard.

“While rising empires are often judicious, even rational in their application of armed force for conquest and control of overseas dominions, fading empires are inclined to ill-considered displays of power, dreaming of bold military masterstrokes that would somehow recoup lost prestige and power,” the historian Alfred McCoy writes. 

“Often irrational even from an imperial point of view, these micro military operations can yield haemorrhaging expenditures or humiliating defeats that only accelerate the process already under way.”

It is vital we see what lies before us. If we continue to be entranced by the images on the walls of Plato’s cave, images that bombard us on screens day and night, if we fail to understand how empire works and its self-destructiveness we will all, especially with the looming climate crisis, descend into a Hobbesian nightmare where the tools of repression, so familiar on the outer reaches of empire, cement into place terrifying corporate totalitarian states.

Chris Hedges worked for nearly two decades as a foreign correspondent in Latin America, the Middle East and the Balkans for The New York Times, National Public Radio and other news organisations.

 _______________

Please go here for this article: https://consortiumnews.com/2024/06/21/chris-hedges-the-impending-collapse-of-us-empire/

And for the original, please go here: https://www.declassifieduk.org/the-impending-collapse-of-the-american-empire/

David Suzuki: It's Ridiculous Just How Good the Economic Case Is for a Rapid Clean Energy Transition

Windmills at sunset. "There’s no valid economic reason to avoid or even delay implementing every climate solution available," writes Suzuki. (Photo: Pixabay/Pexels)

By DAVID SUZUKI

There are no valid economic arguments against rapidly shifting from burning polluting fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources.

Working to resolve the climate crisis is a tremendous economic opportunity. Even normally conservative organizations such as the International Monetary Fund agree that the benefits far outweigh the costs.

Of course, the global consumer-based capitalist system encourages waste and destructive practices in the name of financial gain, so the necessary transformational change really requires a shift in economic paradigms. But even under the current system, or a similar one modified to remove the worst elements of greedy profiteering, the economic advantages of acting are clear.

It’s true that not adequately addressing the crisis is already causing untold misery and death, threatening the survival of human and other life, rendering any human-invented “economy” irrelevant. Still, there’s no valid economic reason to avoid or even delay implementing every climate solution available.

IMF research shows that green development and innovation can boost gross domestic product by at least 1.7 percent after five years compared with a baseline scenario, and “other estimates show up to four times the effect.”

The IMF also reports that cheaper energy and expanding energy-efficient production processes increase the benefits, adding, “Most importantly, they come from less global warming and less frequent (and less costly) climate disasters.”

A study in Cell Reports Sustainability found increasing renewable energy in the U.S. substantially reduced sulphur dioxide and nitrogen dioxides in the atmosphere from 2019 to 2022, providing $249 billion in climate and health benefits.

In terms of coal, oil and gas versus renewable energy, the economic advantages of the latter are undeniable and multiplying. Renewable energy costs less, offers greater energy security, is subject to far less market volatility, is reliable and doesn’t pollute as much.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine illustrates the issue of energy security. With gas supplies cut, energy shortages led to price spikes and impacts on global markets — along with more avariciousness from fossil fuel companies. That’s been cushioned by a rapid transition to renewable energy from sources such as wind and solar with energy storage. Costs for wind and solar also continue to drop, making them more affordable overall than fossil fuels — especially when the high costs of fossil fuel pollution and damage are taken into account.

An abundance of research and examples shows that investing in measures to combat climate change reduces energy costs and makes energy markets less volatile, spurs technological development, cuts health care expenses, avoids costly impacts on everything from agriculture to urban infrastructure and creates greater economic opportunities for a wider range of people.

Meanwhile, the price of inaction accelerates daily: increasing extreme weather events, greater numbers of people fleeing overheating areas, growing pollution- and climate-related health impacts, and worsening water shortages and agricultural losses.

One recent study in Nature conservatively estimates damages from climate change will cost six times as much as limiting global heating to 2 C within the next 26 years — with average incomes falling by 19 per cent.

Another study in Nature estimates the annual cost of climate-related extreme weather damages alone from 2000 to 2019 “average around $143 billion, which breaks down to around $16.3 million per hour,” and that “Over the past 20 years, extreme weather events globally, like hurricanes, floods and heat waves, have cost an estimated $2.8 trillion.” Those figures are rising rapidly.

We’ve seen the costly devastation in Canada: heat domes, floods, drought, rising insurance rates and cost-of-living increases. As the Canadian Climate Institute says, “Between 2010 and 2019, insured losses for catastrophic weather events totalled over $18 billion, and the number of catastrophic events was over three times higher than in the 1980s.”

The fossil fuel industry has provided jobs and economic benefits to many in Canada and around the world, as did other harmful industries like tobacco — but at what price? We’ve long known about the pollution and damage, but industry has worked to downplay or cover up negative consequences. It’s important that those affected by the necessary transition are provided opportunities for better, healthier employment — especially as increasing industry automation kills more jobs. But the only ones really benefiting now from fossil fuels are those profiting from the damage.

There are no valid economic arguments against rapidly shifting from burning polluting fossil fuels to cleaner energy sources. It’s past time to choose a wiser path.

Please go here for the original article: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/economic-argument-for-green-energy

Reflections On My 40th Sobriety Birthday and a Pathway For Us All Into Greater Wholeness, Peace, Compassion, and Love

73 and loving life

This was something that I have been inspired to write — not just for and about myself — but also because, in my perspective, as human beings and on a continuum, we all have addictions, have experienced trauma, and face challenges in opening to embodying the loving essence of who we most truly are. May you find something here that is helpful and empowering in your journey. 

* * * * *

It was June 19th, 1984 when I walked into my first AA meeting. I was 33 years old and the mother to 5 year old Brian and 22 month old Kevin. Matthew hadn't yet been born. I was scared to death and full of shame and confusion. Being a mother was also a vital part of what compelled me to look at my drinking and other areas of my life and seek help and change. I desperately wanted to be the mother my sons needed and to protect them from the trauma I'd experienced in my own childhood.

But it wasn't easy, this opening myself up to living sober, to self-reflection, to accountability, to feeling. I'd been so devoted to image management and looking good, to being in control and trying to protect my heart, to taking the inventory of others rather than myself. And I was deeply resistant to feeling the emotions and memories and experiences that I'd worked so hard to stuff away throughout my young lifetime. But now here I was, overwhelmed with fear and pain, sitting in this meeting and pushing the words out of my mouth, "I'm Molly and I'm an alcoholic." Cringe....

I was looking for answers. I wanted someone to tell me what to do so I could stay sober, get everything under control, and move on, graduate, and be fine, thank you very much. What was most familiar was hiding — hiding from others and hiding from myself — and yet I really had no idea that this is what I had been doing for so very long. It was all I'd ever known. This business of honesty and vulnerability and authenticity was so foreign and incredibly threatening. I would let others in, yes, but only up to a point. Beyond that, I trusted no one. I had learned well how to fortify my heart. And yet, gratefully, once the alcohol was gone, the tears kept coming. And coming and coming.

There was good reason for my disassociation and dependence on alcohol and pot and cigarettes and numerous other non-substance addictions. Today I recognize that it wasn't because I was a bad person or possessed character defects or was incapable of honesty. I understand that it also wasn't because I was born that way or had a disease or had inherited genes which brought on my alcoholism. None of that was at the root of my many addictions.

It was pain. Although addiction runs in my family, my parents and ancestors did not pass on alcoholism. They did, unknowingly and never intentionally, pass on pain. There is no blame or shame here. It simply is what it is. 

And what I understand today is that it is the pain held in the ancestral and cultural legacy burdens I carried deep inside that were what drove my addictions and all of the ways that I tried to cope which caused harm to myself and others. While I was doing the very best that I could, as did my parents and the generations before me, none of us knew how to cope in healthy ways with pain and loss and fear or how to meet many of our basic needs as human beings. 

It is the many faces of trauma — which when unaddressed and denied, judged and shamed, misunderstood and suppressed — are found to show up in generations of families and in our culture at large. We see this in epidemics of addiction, depression and anxiety, and countless other faces of suffering, disconnection, dehumanization, and violence in society and beyond.

 1978, 6 months after my twin brother's suicide

* * * * *

Many years into my sobriety were spent supporting me in beginning to more consciously recognize and experience different parts of myself —

• the parts that are alcoholic and addicted to substances and a variety of nonsubstances 
• the parts of myself that are a traumatized and abused child 
• the parts of me that shut down, shut up, shut out
• the parts that are a fierce inner critic and judgmental of myself and others 
• the poor boundaries and caretaking parts that use focusing on others as a way of avoiding my own deeper needs and emotions 
• the parts which are perfectionistic and controlling and needing to feel better than 
• the parts of me that are disassociated and isolated and alone 
• the parts within myself that are easily triggered and reactive 
• the parts that are full of fear and shame 
• the parts of me which are angry and full of rage
• the anxious and depressed parts of myself 
• the parts that feel worthless and unlovable and disconnected 
• the parts within me which hold an ocean of grief 
• the parts that feel separate from and deeply frightened of intimacy and vulnerability and trusting anyone 
• the parts of me that have gotten sick and showed up with symptoms like fibromyalgia
• the parts of myself that are trying to manage an image and who I think you want me to be rather embodying my authentic Self 

For years in 12 Step meetings (ACOA in particular), individual therapy, group therapy, intensives and workshops, retreats and other venues, I wailed and raged and beat pillows and accessed many parts of myself that I hadn't known existed prior to my sobriety. Stopping my use of alcohol and cigarettes, which were my primary substance addictions, meant that the barriers between my head and my heart were beginning to be dismantled, something which left me increasingly open and raw. I was thawing out and gradually coming back into my body —  and this meant that I was feeling more and more of the trauma that I'd buried within myself for so many years. 

My pain was also connected to the trauma, the legacy burdens, which my parents and their parents and on back through time had carried and blindly passed on. No wonder my parents drank and fought and blamed and shamed and checked out. My dad and, even more so, my mom simply did not know how to meet my deeper essential needs or my brother's for healthy attachment and bonding, mirroring and understanding, calm presence and support, acceptance and compassion, safety and tenderness, and holding and love. No wonder. They couldn't give what they hadn't experienced themselves as children and what they had never healed or transformed within their own hearts. And while there is no justification for abuse and neglect, it is also true that my parents were absolutely doing the best that they could. As was I. As are we all.

The enormous difference for me today is that I have choices. I have choices and access to healthy coping skills and resources, including very much within my Self, that I didn't truly know existed even just a few years ago. This journey of profound healing and transformation continues to evolve and expand. And it's not only staying sober that I'm talking about here. This is much greater, much greater. Because "I'm Molly, I'm an alcoholic" is just one part of me. Only one part. And far from the whole of who I am.

* * * * *

For years into my journey of sobriety, healing, and waking up, there was much that I didn't know and couldn't truly begin to grasp and understand. For one, I didn't understand that I am not my parts. Many years were spent in identities as an alcoholic, an adult child of an alcoholic, a trauma survivor. Many 12 Step programs and counseling resources do not see and acknowledge and work to address the limitations of believing our different parts are who we are. Missed here is a much larger picture of who, I believe, we all are at our core.

And so I went to AA and identified myself as an alcoholic. I did not drink. I also had other addictions pop up as I pushed the substance addictions down. I worked the 12 Steps, got sponsors, went to meetings, and was engaged in counseling. And yet, something was missing. Something crucial. 

It was the pain of my exiles — the deeply buried parts that hold the deepest pain, fear, shame, trauma which began in early childhood — that drove all of my addictions and the various ways that I coped. I was also blind to how these repressed parts of myself were keeping me addicted, fragmented, disassociated, and dishonest with myself and others. Even for years into sobriety, I could not see how the legacy burdens of my exiles continued to impact myself and those around me. And this was true despite my sobriety and spending years doing "inner child work" and learning all about the impacts of the don't talk, don't trust, don't feel, don't be rules that I'd absorbed and so much more. Yet, a process of deep integration and transformation eluded me.

And then each of my three sons, when they hit adolescence, began showing up with their own symptoms of trauma. Which was indescribably painful, frightening, and shocking. 

Here I was many years sober and doing everything that I was told to do and more. And yet something was horribly wrong. I couldn't understand what it was. And I had to find out. I had to go deeper into uncovering the missing pieces, the limitations of my resources of support, and why it was that our family continued to experience the struggles, the shame, the suffering and trauma which had plagued and haunted our families for generations.

Our family, 1990

* * * * *

One of the things that I have been compelled to look at are the limitations of 12 Step programs. While connecting with a supportive community is essential to sobriety and to all the ways that we seek to grow and evolve, there can also be a shadow side to where we turn for help and support. Again and again, this has been my experience.

In looking more deeply at AA, we are told in this 12 Step program that we will always need to keep coming back. We hear how cunning, baffling, and powerful alcohol is and that attending regular meetings, getting a sponsor, reading the Big Book, and working the steps is the way to prevent relapse and stay sober. The readings in every meeting also include references to "character defects," how some of us are incapable of honesty and appear to "have been born that way," and how "working this simple program" is the pathway to sustained sobriety. In every meeting, we also identify and maintain an enduring identity over time as an alcoholic. Sharing in meetings primarily revolves around how our lives were before and how are lives have changed since we've been sober — and how this has been made possible because we have kept coming back to meetings, been engaged with our sponsors, and are working the 12 Steps.

In no way am I denigrating the positive impacts that millions have experienced through their participation in AA. At the same time, I experience what can be harmful pitfalls. Of course, all of us who walk through the doors of an AA meeting have experienced trauma and more often than not are already believing that we are defective, incapable, and may have been born that way. We know and have absorbed these shameful narratives in our deepest selves. And it's certainly part of why we first picked up that first drink — to escape the pain of who we falsely believed ourselves to be.

We also often cannot imagine an identify of Self which at our core embodies Buddha nature, Christ consciousness, or however it is that we experience or think of the Divine. With the focus in AA on being an alcoholic, I believe that that identity obscures opening to moving into a greater experience and embodiment of the beauty, wholeness, compassion, clarity, and love that is the sacred core of who we are. In this way, I have experienced that we stay tied to — rather than experiencing deep freedom from and transformation of — this one part of who we are that has a history of dependency on substances.

It is my belief that this continued focus over time on this one part of ourselves — with again and again and again identifying ourselves as our addiction — that we risk staying locked into fear and blocked from more deeply healing and transforming the root causes behind all of our addictions and suffering. Cunning, baffling, powerful. Character defects. Work this simple program. Some of us are incapable. And then what happens when relapse does occur, and even after we've done everything that we've been told to do — and sometimes for years? What about the shame, the isolating, the deadly relapses that can follow? Which is what happened two months ago to someone I love... which has broken my heart and so many other hearts.

So, for me and for so many reasons, I believe that it's important to explore and illuminate the shadow side to even revered resources which countless people swear by. That, however, does not diminish the reality that sometimes what appears to save us can at the same time cause harm and even kill us.

* * * * *

I have done a lot of personal deep inner work over many years now, including with a wise and compassionate therapist. As I've been grieving the recent tragic death of a loved one, I've needed to process why this person overdosed — and all at the same time that I experience 40 years of sobriety and a totally transformed and rich life. What are the differences in our paths, our beliefs, our supports, our experiences of sobriety, healing, and transformation? 

In addition to Richard Schwartz and all that I've experienced with IFS (Internal Family Systems), it is also my therapist who spoke to me of the "misidentification" that occurs when we mistakenly believe that any one part of ourselves is who we are.

As I spoke with him about the 16 Steps Charlotte Kasl brought forth many years ago in her amazing book Many Roads, One Journey, my therapist reflected how these steps were much more feminist oriented rather than patriarchal. And then I thought of how AA was birthed 90 years ago by two relatively wealthy white men — and it totally resonated with me that one aspect to the shadow side of AA and other 12 Step programs are their roots in patriarchy. 

I'm continuing to uncover more tentacles to how patriarchal beliefs are woven through myself and our culture and beyond. There are just so many ongoing opportunities to expand and evolve and open to greater consciousness and clarity, connection and compassion, transformation and freedom, wisdom and love...

It is my belief that it is healthy and necessary to examine long cherished beliefs and practices in an ongoing way. In doing so, we stay open to evolving and to better understanding what might just be missing and what might just be an alternative. For my young friend who died, for my former husband who's dying of his alcoholism, for countless others who are lost in pain and estranged from the beauty and strength of who they are, and in celebration of my own 40 year life-changing journey, I'm moved to share this — which is something that I had framed on my wall for years:

16-Steps for Discovery and Empowerment 

1. We affirm we have the power to take charge of our lives and stop being dependent on substances, habits, or other people for our self-esteem and security. 

2. We come to believe that God/the Goddess/Universe/Great Spirit/Higher Power awakens the healing wisdom within us when we open ourselves to that power. 

3. We make a decision to become our authentic Selves and trust in the healing power of the truth. 

4. We examine our beliefs, addictions, and dependent behavior in the context of living in a hierarchical, patriarchal culture. 

5. We share with another person and the Universe all those things inside us for which we feel shame and guilt. 

6. We affirm and enjoy our strengths, talents, and creativity, striving not to hide these qualities to protect others’ egos. 

7. We become willing to let go of shame, guilt, and any behavior that keeps us from loving ourSelves and others. 

8. We make a list of people we have harmed and people who have harmed us, and take steps to clear out negative energy by making amends and sharing our grievances in a respectful way. 

9. We express love and gratitude to others, and increasingly appreciate the wonder of life and the blessings we do have. 

10. We continue to trust our reality and daily affirm that we see what we see, we know what we know, and we feel what we feel. 

11. We promptly acknowledge our mistakes and make amends when appropriate, but we do not say we are sorry for things we have not done and we do not cover up, analyze, or take responsibility for the shortcomings of others. 

12. We seek out situations, jobs, and people that affirm our intelligence, perceptions, and self-worth and avoid situations or people who are hurtful, harmful, or demeaning to us. 

13. We take steps to heal our physical bodies, organize our lives, reduce stress, and have fun. 

 14. We seek to find our inward calling, and develop the will and wisdom to follow it. 

15. We accept the ups and downs of life as natural events that can be used as lessons for our growth. 

16. We grow in awareness that we are interrelated with all living things, and we contribute to restoring peace and balance on the planet. 

From Many Roads, One Journey: Moving Beyond 

the 12-Steps by Charlotte Davis Kasl

* * * * *

The 16 Steps of Discovery and Empowerment by Charlotte Kasl reflects only a glimpse into evolving ways and resources which point to a trailhead holding the potential for greater freedom from suffering. And it's not just freedom from addiction, but also the suffering embedded in all the many forms of being lost and disconnected from our Self and all of life.

Without addressing the trauma held in my different parts and unburdening these parts from the pain they carried, I would have remained vulnerable to relapse into any number of addictions and distractions and unhealthy coping strategies. It's really very simple: address and embrace, integrate and heal, unburden and transform our deeper pain, or it will inevitably pop up elsewhere. This is especially true in our closest relationships. I certainly learned this incredibly painful lesson when the legacy burdens I had carried began to show up in my own children.

I need to emphasize this again: It is this pain that keeps us vulnerable to relapse into old addictions or new ones, old triggers and ruptured relationships, autoimmune and other illnesses, and on and on — not how well we are attending and working a 12 Step program, not the meditation we do or the spiritual bypassing endorsed by many New Agers and seekers of enlightenment, not the sweat lodges and ceremonies and churches and prayers we practice. While many of these can be helpful and part of our paths of healing and awakening, none in them in and of themselves will unburden us of our pain if the trauma we've experienced remains locked away deep in our bodies.

The gifts of unburdening are profound. As I've moved further and further into unburdening the legacy burdens I've carried, the old places have lost their power over me. This is genuine freedom that with each year that I am alive I experience in greater depth and consistency. This is the journey of learning how to be Self-led and bringing the wisdom and compassion and love of my Self into life's challenges and losses, mine and yours.

To further clarify, IFS defines people who are Self-led as being more rooted in our humanity and more in tune with being a part of something larger than ourselves. Self-leadership can be seen as a state of mind and heart that manifests through positive virtues such as compassion, calmness, clarity, curiosity, confidence, courage, creativity, and connectedness. Essentially, our Self is the Sacred core of our being. This, I believe, is the heart and soul of what we human beings are all born with.

These are some examples of how I experience the freedom, empowerment, compassion, healing and love held in Self-leadership:

• 40 years of sobriety and no longer experiencing any pull to go back to my old addictions. None. This is true freedom from the control this one part of me once had.
• I am empowered to better understand, befriend, love, and hold with compassion the different parts of myself and others.
• My own trauma has been transformed into the capacity to bring wisdom and compassion, healing and helpful support, clarity and authenticity, tenderness and kindness to my working relationships over the span of 30 years with abused preschool aged children, first time parents, and as a caseworker with Child Welfare.
• I was able to bring compassion, love, and healing to my once severely mentally ill and alcoholic mother during the last seven years of her life —something I had been told for decades was impossible. I was able to forgive and hold with compassion the large role that my mother had played in my twin's suicide and my father's death at age 60. Over those last seven years and until her death at age 94, my mom and I were able to share a loving relationship — which was an extraordinary miracle.
• I have been 20 years free from all symptoms of fibromyalgia.
• I am able to work with triggers and old pain, judgments and resentments, blame and shame, fear and control, anger and separation as these old places arise — which happens less and less — and not get stuck in them.
• I am able to experience healthier boundaries and loving relationships, including with my beloved husband, with children and grandchildren, and with our many dear friends. 
• I am able to hold deep grief in one hand and deep gratitude in the other and be stretched large by them; I can cry, I can laugh, I can feel.
• I can ask for help and support when I need it and give loving support to others without resuming my old addiction to using caretaking as a way to avoid my own deeper emotions and needs.
• I am able to work with my different parts and recognize this path of healing, evolving, and growing into my wholeness as being a lifelong journey.
• I am able to experience this deep caring and sacred connection with all of life.

This is but a glimpse. There is so much more.

* * * * *

Decades ago I read somewhere that there would come at time when the pull of living a rich and full life would grow stronger than any pull to go back. At that time, I could not imagine such freedom. Today I can. Today, with each year as I grow older, I experience more and more of this freedom.

It is my belief that this freedom that comes with unburdening, befriending, and holding ourselves with loving compassion is the essential gift that inevitably comes with living our lives from a place of increasing Self-leadership.

Internal Family Systems (IFS), developed by Richard Schwartz and now practiced worldwide, holds many profound and life-changing gifts. This has been one essential part of my journey, which is best illustrated in a video interview with Richard Schwartz which I posted here: https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2024/06/an-excellent-interview-with-richard.html. This is the clearest summary of what I have experienced as one important pathway into freedom from the suffering we humans experience. 

So many years went by in which there were vital missing pieces to my journey of healing and transformation. Illuminated here is what was missing: https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2024/05/no-bad-parts-healing-trauma-and.html.

Another empowering and treasured gift in the practice of IFS are the 8 C's: compassion, curiosity, clarity, creativity, calm, confidence, courage, and connectedness. Without exception, I have grown and continue to grow in my capacity to experience the 8 C's. This is a particularly beautiful and related conversation on Becoming Our Compassionate Self: https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2024/05/highly-recommended-becoming-our.html. There is so much unburdening and freedom that comes with learning to truly and deeply hold ourselves and others with compassion and loving-kindness.

Gratefully, there are so many changes that are unfolding and evolving in addressing and treating addiction, depression and anxiety, and all of the many faces of trauma. This is one more link to an invaluable conversation between Richard Schwartz, Gabor Mate, and Marc Lewis: https://mollystrongheart.blogspot.com/2024/05/highly-recommended-gabor-mate-richard.html. It is long past time for us all to be rethinking addiction. As we do, lives will be saved. And the potential to heal and grow into our greater wholeness as fully embodied human beings will expand exponentially.

Today my outer life is a reflection of my inner life. And as I celebrate and give deep thanks for this 40 year anniversary, I recognize that it is about so much more than sobriety. Putting down the drink, the joint, the cigarette, and other addictions which had plagued my young life was only a beginning. Only a beginning. At 73, I am able to move well beyond sobriety and into an extraordinarily rich life that for years, including years into my sobriety, I could not have imagined.

This is the pathway that I have discovered into greater wholeness, peace, compassion, and love. This is the solid ground of inhabiting my Self. This, to me, is the birthright of us all — to live in this kind of authenticity, wholeness, beauty, joy, compassion, wisdom, and love. Deepest bow of gratitude.

Bless us all on our journeys,

💗

Molly