Wholeness, Confidence, And Deep Healing with IFS with Dr. Jay Earley

Welcome to Shrink for the Shy Guy. This is the show for you. If you are sick and tired of.

Being held back by fear, self doubt, social anxiety, shyness, anything that's stopping you from you being you.

I'm going to share the most powerful tools and resources that I've been discovering over the last 15 years on my.

Journey to eradicate social anxiety and instill.

Confidence, first in myself and then in every single person that I meet on my journey. You're going to learn these tools and.

How to apply them in your life.

Now so that you can become the most free, powerful, bold, authentic version of you.

Welcome to today's episode of the show. Welcome to all of you. What does that mean? Well, you're gonna find out today because we tend to think of ourselves as one person. I am Aziz, you're whatever your name is. And yet, actually, if you really pay attention to your experience, it's not so consistent. It's not just one guy in there, one girl in there, one being in there. There's a lot of us. You know, part of me wants to go do this thing, and part of me doesn't. Part of me likes this person, and part of me is angry at this person. Part of me wants to quit this, and part of me wants to stick it out or whatever it is for you in your life. And we tend to maybe notice those parts when it's really loud and we're in conflict, like, should I move forward with this project or should I go to this thing or not? And these two parts are fighting in our heads. But what we don't realize is that we are a collection of parts all the time. And that not only are these parts influencing us moment to moment, but we can organize our whole way of approaching life. Our whole sense of our personality, all the patterns and behaviors we have, are in many ways coming out of what parts in charge, certain parts of us that might be hurt by things that we then start try to avoid. We can even have parts whose sole purpose is to protect us and even more specifically, protect a part of us from being hurt. So if we got real painful experience of rejection when we were young, we might have a part inside of us that felt hurt from being rejected when we were young. And we have another part inside of us that is there to protect us from ever getting rejected again. And this is just the tip of the iceberg. And I am so grateful today to not just be sharing about what I know about this with you, but to bring in one of the most brilliant, brilliant thinkers and authors and teachers on this subject, One of the preeminent experts on internal family systems therapy. IFS is what it's known as, and this is an approach to helping people radically improve their lives, to step into a greater sense of wholeness, of healing, of love, of connection, of confidence by understanding and integrating all these different parts of us. So it's not this big fight in there, and we're not driven by all these unconscious things that we don't understand to protect ourselves, to avoid certain things. And we can really start to become more centered in who we are, more congruent and approach life from that place. And his name is Dr. Jay Early. He is a psychologist who's been practicing therapy for over 35 years. He's the author of numerous books including Inner Journeys, Interactive Group Therapy, and his book called Self Therapy, which is a step by step guide to creating wholeness and healing your inner child using ifs that internal family systems therapy, which is a new cutting edge psychotherapy model that he's been a major contributor in developing and flushing out. So not only does he write books, but he's a preeminent teacher on this subject and has so much to offer. So as I said, I'm very grateful to be able to share what he knows so that I can learn, you can learn, and we can all learn and, and grow into our most confident selves.

Thank you so much for joining us today, Jay, to talk about parts, work, ifs and all kinds of ways that we can learn to work with what's going on inside of us to release social anxiety and develop confidence. I'm really excited to have you here today.

Yeah, it's nice to be here.

So you, you have a lot of experience in what's something called ifs, and some people may be familiar with that, may not. And I really want to use this modality in a way that's going to help people with social anxiety and confidence. But maybe kind of a top level description for someone who's pretty new to it. How do you describe ifs and parts work and other language for it to someone who maybe is not familiar with or never heard of it before? Sure.

So IFS stands for internal Family systems therapy, which is actually not a very good name for it. I mean, there's a reason why it ended up being called that way, because the guy who developed it, Dick Schwartz, was originally a family therapist. And at some point in doing his family therapy, he realized that it wasn't entirely working without looking inside the people he was working with. And when he started looking Inside he discovered that, that they had parts, you know, different sub personalities. And he also discovered that those different subpersonalities were related to each other in a system that was similar to what he had learned about family systems. So ifs is actually a form of individual therapy. The name is confusing, but. But you're actually working with the conglomeration of internal parts, which. And so a part is like a little person inside us who. I mean, you know, in other forms of therapy they might be called defenses or complexes or, you know, things like that. But the understanding in ifs is they, they aren't mechanical things like defenses or complexes, that they're actually live little beings inside us and that we can learn to talk to them and get to know them and help to heal them of their wounds and change their behavior and things like that. So that, that's a bare beginning, but I'll stop there. I love it.

That's fascinating. So let's say, you know, someone feels anxious before they're gonna meet someone or network or something like that. And there's that fear, anxiety, maybe some self doubt in there, right? Is that that sub personality? I mean, is that multiple things because there's multiple feelings going on, or does one subpersonality have multiple feelings?

Could be either. Actually a single part can have multiple feelings. And if you have multiple feelings, it's probably more likely to be multiple parts, but not necessarily so. Actually, let me go a little bit further into ifs and then I'll relate it to what somebody might feel in one of those difficult situations. So in ifs, there's an understanding that ifs categorizes. Well, actually, I should make it clear there's healthy parts and then there's problematic parts or extreme parts. And of course, in therapy we deal with the extreme parts because the healthy parts are just helping us live our lives better. So you might have a creative part or a part that's good at intimacy, or a part that's really smart. You know, those are just healthy parts and it's nice to know that they're there, but you don't have to worry about them because they're functioning fine. But so among the non healthy parts, there are two main categories, protectors and exiles. And protectors are parts that try to protect us from feeling our underlying pain. And that's the pain that's carried by the exiles. So a protector may either try to like keep you in your head or space you out or make you numb or something so you can't actually feel, I mean, the underlying pain that's being carried by the exiles. Or a protector may also try to influence the way you act in the world in ways that it thinks will protect you from being hurt or being judged or rejected or whatever. And then the exiles are usually, they're wounded inner child parts usually carrying wounds from childhood. So you know, an exile might feel scared or anxious or bad about itself or ashamed, things like that. And then a protector would, will do its best to try to make sure that you actually can't feel any of those feelings that the exile is feeling. Because first of all, it would make it hard for you to function. And in some cases it could be overwhelming and dangerous to actually, especially if you've got exiles that are carrying trauma, it actually could be dangerous to actually feel that trauma. It could be overwhelming, et cetera, et cetera. So the protectors do their job and because they're not healthy parts though, they do it in a way that usually, even though they're trying to help us, their protection usually makes things more difficult. Okay, so now let's suppose somebody's in a situation that's anxiety provoking. So most likely they're going to have a protector that makes them withdraw or get, you know, well, withdrawal is a common one, but it could be other things like go up into their head totally and just kind of be intellectual and don't actually connect with people. Or they could have a protector that gets, it gets annoyed at people. So, you know, so you can have various protectors that will try to keep you from feeling. Now usually when somebody's got social anxiety, that's going to be carried by an exile, most likely. But usually what shows up first is the protector. Because usually in a really anxiety provoking situation, even if the person's conscious of anxiety, that's probably not all that's going on. They're probably going to have a few protectors running around trying to keep them from being too anxious.

Right? Yeah, I've seen this one both in myself and clients where something, let's say there's an anxiety about something and then a protector will come in and say, I don't really want to do that thing. That's, that's, I'm not, that's not my style, blah, blah, blah. I have all these reasons why I just don't want to do it.

Right.

And of course underneath that maybe I do really want to do it. There's just that exile, that anxiety. So I can see how these protectors can kind of try to totally avoid the situation or have maybe even the pain about the situation as well and can be pretty effective and pretty convincing and compelling. I'm wondering when you start first start working with people. It seems like it's possible to live for the most part with one protector after another, kind of driving the bus as it were.

That's what most, most of us do. I mean, so for an example for me when I've been in situations where I was feeling social anxiety, I would have a protector that comes up and says, well this is clearly not safe. Why don't you just kind of withdraw? Why don't you just kind of move to the side? Don't really try, don't really reach out to people, you know, just stay back. And I mean it wouldn't say that in words, it would just have me do that, you know, so that's, that's an example of another, another example of a protector in that kind of setting.

And that I'd imagine is probably a core part of the process is helping people become aware of these parts so that they can notice, oh, that part is active and encouraging me to do X as opposed to just doing the thing and not even being aware of why and what's happening.

Right. In fact, some protectors end up without wanting to do this. They end up doing what is this, what sometimes is called a self fulfilling prophecy. So like you can walk into a social setting and the exile is saying, oh I'm scared, people aren't going to like me. They're not going to find me interesting. And then the protector says, well let's withdraw then. And so the result is they, people don't find them interesting, you know, so it's like a self fulfilling prophecy which of course completely backfires. But that's what often happens.

Yeah, well, because that's the, in a way that's the point of the protector, right. If it's afraid of if that wounded child. Actually maybe we'll get more into these exile parts. But it's, I'd imagine there's, there's pain around connection there or a great risk, perceived risk that connection could lead to pain. And so the protector is going to want to not connect even though, you know, and I'll say whatever it needs to and then the result will be no connection or limited connection which probably creates its own sort of suffering. But again that's. The protectors are not necessarily functional. They're just, they carry out a job, right?

They have a job, they do it, they. And in fact sometimes the, the very lack of connection makes the person even more anxious the next time when they're in that setting because, oh, it didn't work the last time. So, you know, which is not that what the protectors trying to do. It's just trying to protect them from whatever it's afraid is going to happen. You know, usually rejection or shame, those are the two biggies.

Yeah. So does that mean that there's, say, exile parts that feel intense shame or rejection from. From different parts, different times in our childhood?

Yep, exactly.

And do you think that's pretty universal for everyone, not just people with social anxiety? Is that pretty shared among human experience in your perspective?

Yeah, it's very common. Yeah.

So we have this exile parties, exile parts that feel these painful emotions, and then we have the protectors that are designed to kind of try to have us avoid it ineffectively in the long term. And so what do we do with ifs to gain a bit more awareness and then choice and then ultimately liberation to integrate these parts.

Yeah. So the third concept in ifs, besides protectors and exiles, that's very important is the self. So there's an understanding in ifs that who we really are, we, when we're not taken over by any parts, is that we're naturally open, curious, compassionate, grounded, calm, things like that. And so in ifs, there are some really cool, simple techniques that can help a person get into self fairly easily. Unless they have major protectors because there's a lot of deep underlying trauma, then it can take much longer to get into self. But for most people, you can get into self, at least enough self to do the work pretty easily, by finding out what parts. Because, you know, basically the understanding is that who we truly are is the self. And so if you can find out what part has taken you over at any given moment and talk to that part and ask it to not take you over into, you know, ifs calls it unblending in that moment. And if that's the only part that was blended with you, then once that part steps aside, then you're in self, at least enough self to do the work, usually. And so the self is actually the agent of healing. In ifs, it's not so much the therapist. I mean, the therapist is still needed in most cases, but the therapist is more a coach for the self than the actual agent of healing. And so basically what you do is you start out and the client will say, okay, here's a part that I'd like to. Or they may actually say, here's a situation that I want to work on. And then the therapist will help them figure out what parts are involved, that situation. And then they'll choose one of those parts to work on, you know, like one of those withdrawal protectors or even. And usually it's better to start with a protector in ifs, which I can explain later. So you start with some protector and you, you know, you help the client get into self. And then the self talks to the protector and asks it questions like, what are you trying to accomplish by. Let's say it's a withdrawal protector like I was talking about. So, you know, you, the self might ask the protector, so what are you trying to accomplish by withdrawing in these social settings? And the protector will say, well, I'm trying to keep you safe. You're gonna, you're gonna be, you know, you're gonna be rejected by everybody anyway, so let's just withdraw and not. Not get into trouble and not get rejected. Or worse, the protector will say, you know what, you're gonna make a fool of yourself. That's why I'm withdrawing. So, and sometimes, of course, it's not. The protectors aren't that clear that quickly. Sometimes you have to sort of get to know them a little bit better before they really tell you what. Where they're coming from and what they're afraid of. But so it's important. So basically, the self gets to know the protector and begins to form a relationship with the protective protector. So ifs is a relational form of therapy, but the main relationship is between the self and each part. I mean, the therapeutic relationship with the therapist is also important, but it's more of a, like a ground for everything else you do. So, so, right. So the, the self gets to know the protector, does some does, you know, basically the aim is to not only find out about the protector, but also to develop a relationship where the protector begins to trust the self. And then usually in the process of getting to know that, like the protector says, well, guess what, you're going to make a fool of yourself. Well, it's not hard to figure out that it's protecting an exile that's carrying shame. Right? So then, you know, once you get to know the protector, you know, you can say, so it looks like you're protecting an exile who feels ashamed. Will you give me permission to work with that exile? Because you don't want to just barge into an exile if you don't have permission, because otherwise, then the protector will sabotage your work with the exile. You know, and if there's any other protectors, you sort of want to make sure you have their permissions too. Although, you know, it's not foolproof. But as you go, you'll. You'll find out if a protector jumps in and, you know, takes you out of your work with an exile, then, you know, you got to get its. You know, get to know it and get it to its permission, too. Now, the other important understanding is you can't really expect to. Sometimes it happens, but you can't really expect a protector to change until you've healed the exile or exiles. It's protecting. That's one of the main things that people slip up on. The first. You know, the first thing is you get to know the protector, you find out what it's doing, and it's obviously dysfunctional. So the. The first obvious thing that people want to do is say, okay, let me see if I can talk this protector out of doing what it's doing. You know, like, hey, protector, it's not helping me. Would you want to. You make me withdraw? Well, guess what? That usually doesn't work because the exile is still there. So the I. So once you've gotten to know the protector, you get permission to work with the exile, and then there's a whole series of steps. Well, first of all, you get to know the exile. The self does remember this is the client's self that's doing this work under the guidance of the therapist. So the self gets to know the exile, finds out more about it, and then asks the exile to show what happened to it in childhood, to cause it to be feeling whatever it's feeling, whether it's shame or rejection or worthlessness or whatever. And parts, no, they know what happened, even if the client doesn't know, the parts know. So.

So when the client is speaking on behalf of that part, things will be revealed or emerged that maybe the client before would not consciously have known or remembered.

Yeah, except it's slightly different than what you said. It's. I mean, the client. The. The client does speak to the therapist on behalf of the part. But what happens first is, is the part talks to the client and the part and the client. I'm sorry, the self of the client and the part have a conversation.

Right. Okay. Like in silence.

Usually in silence.

So it's just sort of like a listening and then listening to and communicating to that. That exile part and then seeing what it communicates in language or memories or images.

Right. And most parts do communicate in internal language, but some don't. And of course, some. Many of them also use images or body sensations as a way of communicating, but usually most of them do use some language, some internal language. So that makes it easier.

Really interesting, Jay, because, you know, I was asking some. Some of these basic questions to get everyone up to speed. But I've actually been really fascinated in your work, and I read your book Self Therapy a couple years ago and was inspired to really do a lot of these techniques, as you teach in the book and in the workbook, that you have to really make this accessible. I mean, obviously, you encourage people to get help with a guided IFS therapist and, you know, encourage people to kind of do the work and continue the work. And so I really learned a lot. And one thing I realized is that listening to the exile is a, for me, Was a very. What's the word? It took a lot of self awareness to see how I'm. I might think I'm in the self listening to the exile part, but really there's like a subtle protector agenda. Okay, I'm in the self. I'm gonna listen to this part. But it's almost like trying to wait for a mouse to come out of the hole to pounce on it and get it. You know, it's like, okay, let's listen to it. Listen to it so we can get it and make it go away. And then I really. I know it took a while to really catch that and be like, oh, no, this is really about listening. And I could see how the not wanting to listen was still kind of being in a defended place of, like, right, I don't really want to know. That's uncomfortable. And it took me, like, a breakthrough moment where I realized, like, oh, I need to turn towards that part. And the phrase that came to me was, you know, show me anything. Show me everything you got. I want to know. And that, to me, was a tipping point. And I would have said I was doing the IFS work probably for a good six months when I was actually subtly blocking and being impatient to try.

Yeah, that's easy to do. That's one of the functions of an IFS therapist is to. Is to catch that. Another thing that commonly happens is that the self will. Well, the client will ask the. The exile or protector, you know, a question, and then instead of waiting for. To hear the answer, the Some intellectual part will come in and try to figure out the answer. So that's another thing that, you know, that you have to watch for. Yeah. So there's a whole. There's a whole way of doing this that people have to learn. That's why I teach IFS classes, so I help in those classes. I teach people how to do that. And of course, as a therapist, I get to help them even more individually learn how to do that. And you're right. If you're doing it on your own, it's very tricky. You could easily, you know, be doing it slightly off the way it needs to be done.

Sure. Well, to know if you're in self, I think probably as his own self awareness, capacity, or skill set. And so I jumped in there because I got excited. But so we're being with this exile part, we're letting it communicate to us in terms of words and images. And let's say we are very receptive from that place of self and really curious and really listening. And then, sure enough, memories come in, or images or pain from a moment in our childhood or many moments throughout childhood. And there it is, you know, there's like the raw pain, the feelings in the heart, memories, and we're with it. And you said the self is the healing agent or aspect.

What is it?

Just bearing witness from the self?

No, that's just the beginning. I see. I mean, that's actually very important. It's very important for the exile to be witnessed and to be understood. And in fact, you don't move on to the next step until you have determined that the exile said everything they wanted to say and that they feel understood, and not just intellectually understood, but emotionally understood by the self. Then you go to the next step, which I call re parenting, or you could call it the corrective emotional experience. And in the next step, the client as self goes back in their imagination and enters that childhood scene where the exile was wounded or not cared for or whatever happened, and basically provides the exile with whatever they need for healing, whether if they need to protect the exile from something that somebody did to it, or they need to be there for the exile in a way that the parent wasn't. I mean, sometimes the self actually becomes the good parent for the exile that the exile never had. But that's just one way. The reparenting can take all different, all kinds of different forms, depending on how the original traumatic incident happened. And so that's a big part of the healing. And then as part of that, you may actually retrieve the exile if the exile wants it. They don't always want that, but if they do, you can take the exile out of that childhood situation and bring them into your current life or into your heart or any other place that they'd like to go. Of course, this is all imaginary, but it's very real. It's not like you're pretending. You're actually giving the exile a new, healthy healing experience, which actually, you know, rearranges what's going on in the brain. And then the final step is called unburdening. It's like an internal ritual where the exile gets to release the painful feelings or the negative beliefs they're carrying. And they can, you know, they end up. They can release it to light or have it washed away by water. You know, it's like one of the. Usually one of the natural elements, or it can be anything else, but it's a ritual that sort of confirms that the pain has been taken away and will never have to come back. And then. And then after that, the. The exile will be very different. And so you want to spend some time noticing how the exile is different and what are the new qualities and feelings that are coming up in the exile. Oh, and right. And then I guess I might as well just finish the whole thing. Then the final step is you go back to the protector and you make sure that the protector knows what has happened and knows that the exile is now healed and transformed and feeling safe or, you know, curious or, you know, all kinds of positive things. And then you say the protector. Well, now, do you still feel like you need to do your protective job or can you let go of it? And then that'll tell you? Because sometimes the protector will say, no, I can't. And usually the reason is because it's protecting more than one exile and you've only healed one of them. But, you know, often the protector can at that point, because you're really. It's not enough to heal the exile, because usually most of the problematic stuff we have in our lives comes from protectors. It may be triggered by exiles, but it actually comes from protectors. And so you actually have to go back to the protector and see if it's willing to let go of its protective role.

Right?

Yeah. So the protector can kind of be in almost like a excessive patrolling force or something, running around, you know, way past the. The moment of. Of trauma or incident. It's just still carrying out its duty.

But if it isn't willing to let go, there's always a reason for it. You just have to find out what that is and address it.

And it seems like there are going to be a lot of different protectors and a lot of different exiles as you talk about this process. And so do people need to understand and communicate with all of them, or you just kind of go with the areas that are, oh, I'm having a problem with this area of my life. So let me go in there and work on that and then work. Or do you. Yeah. So it's not really comprehensive in that way.

Well, it can be either. I mean, the nice thing is that ifs can be fairly efficient. If a client says, I need to work on this issue, and if the issue isn't some major thing that involves all their parts, you know, then you can just focus on that issue, see what parts are involved, do the healing process on those parts, and that will usually take care of that issue for the client. And if that's all they care about, then, you know, then they can leave therapy and fine. But, you know, if somebody wants a more robust personality change or, you know, a deeper level of growth, then they may want to stick around and work on lots of different parts. And so, you know, it's up to the person. And you're right, we all have lots of different parts. I remember when I first. And by the way, you don't, you know, not all of the parts are major parts that need major stuff. I mean, when I originally started doing ifs work on myself, I was keeping track of my parts. And I remember I ended up with about a list of about 50. Now, that doesn't mean that I would need to go through and work on every single one of those parts because some of them may be more just kind of tangential or not, you know, not such a big deal in my personality. But there will often be, you know, 10 or 12 or so parts that are more of a big deal and really needed, need to be focused on if you want, you know, the full. The full possibility for change. Right.

Yeah. So it seems like, you know, let's say someone listening is intrigued and obviously the first step I would recommend. Well, when I recommend. And maybe you have a different first step, Jay, would be, you know, that your book Self Therapy seems like a great starting point for anyone who really wants to learn how to do this and how to integrate this into their own. Their own growth.

Yeah, that's what I would recommend too. That's the starting point.

So starting with that and then. But it seems like this would require, you know, regular practice. Like, you're not just going to read the book and be like, ah, I get it, you have to get in there and interact with these parts. I'm wondering, do. So when I was going through the book, I was doing a lot of writing and dialoguing, you know, on paper, as it were, with these parts on a computer, is it possible what is the effectiveness have you found from, say, sitting and meditation, basically, and kind of picking the protector and dialoguing, but not actually writing it down, but doing it inside your own mind and awareness? What's your thought of that?

Everybody's different. I think for some people it might be more effective, what you just said, to go into a meditative place and just go inside and work with the parts and then when you're done, take some notes. But for other people, you know, if they're working on their own, then dialoguing through writing is also very effective for some people. Now, I've also found that most people are able to do this more effectively if they're working with a partner, even if the partner is not a therapist. And, you know, that's one of the things. In my IFS classes, I pair people up on a rotating basis for homework. So they pair up with somebody in the class and they sort of practice doing sessions with each other or witnessing sessions with each other. And for most people, that's more effective than trying to do it on their own. Not for everybody. Some. Some people are really good on their own.

I can see that, because I just. I can really see the speed and the kind of oily slipperiness with which we can slip in and out of different parts. At least that's what I found in my own experience. I think by having someone play it out, you know, you're. It's just a little bit more clear. Whereas if it's internal, it can, you know, it can shift very, very quickly. That's what I found. I found I have some pretty crafty protectors.

Yeah.

That really, really don't, you know, don't want me to go there and feel different parts and aspects of my experience.

Yeah. And for a lot of people, it's not even. I mean, certainly if that's the case, it would really have to have a partner who's appointed out what they were seeing. But for many people, even if. Even if it's not that. I mean, for many people, if you just have a partner who's a silent witness, it somehow makes the work go really much more effectively than if you're doing it on your own. We seem to be social beings, and so. But that's not true for everybody.

And so there is. I found, and this is inspiring me to continue some of the practices. And I found that I. One of the main ways that an exile, or probably multiple exiles would sort of speak to me would actually be through body sensations.

Yeah.

When I would slow down and start to feel there would almost always be this pretty strong sensation in my heart that when I tuned in deeper there would be, you know, and sort of relaxed the protectors and the, you know, mine would come in the form of like, I don't have time to feel this, I need to know what this is before I can feel it, blah, blah, blah. And so kind of relaxing those and communicating with them to create more openness to feel. Then there would be this kind of body sensation. And I found that there would be many different memories from different times in my life. And is your sense that it will be one exile that has multiple wounds or is each instance almost like its own exile part?

It can be either. Sometimes each wound is a different exile and sometimes an exile can have multiple wounds. I mean, I've even seen exiles that exist at multiple ages. So yeah, it varies. But you know, if you're. Even if the exile starts out or you become aware of the exile because of a body sensation, like a pain in your heart or something, if you actually go beyond the body sensation and actually see it as a part of, and start communicating with it, usually it will communicate with you in internal words. I mean, there, you know, there are a few parts that don't talk, but most of them do, even if they start out. So even if you start out with a body sensation, if you actually treat it as a part that's its own being and you can get to know it, usually they will respond to you in words and you can develop a relationship with them.

See, that's interesting. And what about. I found that this occurs. I've seen this in clients too, and in myself. Sometimes an exiled part will, I don't know, want. It does feel very young and it will maybe want something that is not feasible or not doable.

Like, sure.

For example, I would see this and this comes up with social anxiety and stuff. It's like that part's like, ah, I don't want to, I don't want to go to that thing or I don't want to interact with those people, or I don't want to be seen in this way. And you know, guess what?

That's probably a protector.

Oh, interesting. So. So that when you tune in and that X. Okay, so that's the protector that.

So the thing I want to make clear is protectors can be very young too. Even though protectors are, you know, sometimes older, you can have, you know, if you had an incident at one year old that produced in a one year old exile, it also may have produced a one Year old protector or a couple of them. So protect. You know, young parts are not just exiles, they can be protectors. And what you just described was protector stuff.

That totally makes sense. I think you're absolutely right that it's, it's trying to push away or avoid an experience because of some sort of pain that it associates that experience. Yeah, interesting. So let's say someone wants to feel more free from social anxiety in these, in a variety of situations and have more self confidence, self acceptance, self love with the. And they're like, okay, I'm going to get started to get the book. Here I go. Would, would they just sort of start with whatever incident is happening, you know, that week, that month in their life? Okay, so like I'm scared to, you know, I'm scared to say, you know, speak up in that meeting or what have you. So that's the place they would start is like what's going on with that meeting?

Right, yeah. And often even though they're in touch with the fear of speaking up, the part that keeps from them from speaking up is probably an exile. I mean it's probably a protector and the part that's actually scared of speaking up is probably an exile. So you would generally start with the protector. But yeah, absolutely. You focus on either a recent incident or how it feels generally when you're having some difficulty and you know, see what parts are involved and go in and start working with them.

Hmm.

Yeah.

It's a really beautiful approach. I mean it seems like the, at its root it's really about finding those that those the pain and meeting it with a skillful love.

Yes, Self love is often the love of the self for apart. Yeah.

And so as we, as we get to close to concluding here, because I really think, I mean this has been very helpful to help kind of pull it apart and make sense of it and then, you know, there's only so much we can, that anyone can do kind of intellectually. Understanding as you're saying, you know, getting in there is really the key. So I think that this is going to be hopefully inspiring people to do that work. Are there any other general ideas? I mean you've done this with lots of people in the classes and therapy. Any other thoughts or tips as someone who wants to embark on this work to help it be effective for them?

Well, one thing I would say is each person is different in terms of how much support they need to do the work. You know, some people can do it completely on their own, some people need a partner to work with, some People will do much better if they take one of my classes. Some people absolutely need an IFS therapist. They can't do it on their own or even through a class. So it's. So it's a question of trying it out and seeing how much external support you need and what form of external support you need to make it work.

Yeah. Great. And can you tell us a bit more about the classes that you do? Are they remote so people from different places in the country and world could be a part of them?

Yeah, I do them by video conference using zoom, and so people can do them from anywhere. And in fact, I'm starting a basic class in a week or two. So I teach a basic class which teaches how to work with how to get in self and how to work with protectors. And then I teach an exiles class that follows it, which is how to work with exiles and how to unburden them. And then I have, you know, more advanced classes if people want to go even further. And they're all by video conference.

Oh, great. Yeah. And where would someone go to find out about those courses and register and go further?

So my website is personal growth programs dot com. Great.

Personal growth programs with hyphens in there dot com. And we'll put a link below this episode@shrinkforthshy guy.com with. With a link to that page. So you can also go to our page to find out about that and go learn about these classes. And I would highly. I mean, I'm actually going to look at the one you're mentioning, Jay, because I, going through the book, I realized like, oh, this is a, this is a very. It's in some ways, in some ways, to me, it struck me as a little bit complex. Not, not in the how to do it. It's all. Oh, that totally all makes sense. But then doing it on myself, I was like, oh, there's a lot here. So I.

That's right.

Yeah.

The psyche is actually very complex. And so, you know, even the. I, you know, the. I've given you a fairly simplistic description this, because that's all we can do in this time. But actually, you know, things. Things get, you know, tricky and complicated fairly easily. And so, yeah, there's all kinds of things that you need to know to actually be successful at it. Beautiful.

Well, I recommend people go further and at the very least, I mean, just hearing this and understanding that there are different, you know, parts and sub personalities and in being, finding ways to get more in touch with the core self that can relate to parts. I mean, I think that in itself is already a very liberating realization for people.

Yeah. Yeah, it's big.

So thank you so much for sharing your time and your knowledge with us today, but also for the work that you've done. I know you've really done a lot to bring ifs out of, you know, just the therapy office and really expanding it with the classes that you do with the book and other things you've spoken with. I think it's so valuable to spread this kind of cutting edge approach to therapy and self growth, to really help people heal. So thank you so much for all that you do, Jay.

Thank you. And thank you for being such a good interviewer.

Yeah, my pleasure.

That brings us to the end of the interview, but not quite the end of the episode.

Time for action. Action, action.

Your action step today is to have a conversation not with anyone out there, but in here. You're gonna have a conversation between you and other parts of you. And there's probably different aspects from this interview that have maybe stimulated some thoughts or ideas about what parts to talk to or how to go about it. And I would say you can study more, you can get better at it. You can learn a lot more. But just start. Start by opening up a journal or a file on your phone or file on your computer and just start typing or writing like, okay, talk to a certain part of you or just, who's in here? Let's go on.

Hello.

Hello. Who's in here? What part has a feeling about this? Pick a thing in your life, like your work or a relationship or your love life or your health, and be like, all right, what parts come up? Is there a sad part? Is there a discouraged part? Is there an optimistic part? Is there an irrational kind of imagining, glory and fantasy part? Whatever it is, your goal is to meet them with curiosity. You're like a journalist or a scientist. You're just like, who's in here? I'm. I want to know. Just like a scientist might want to know, what are all the different species of bat in this jungle? It's like, what are all the different characters in this family? I want to know them. And set aside judging, evaluating, pushing. It should be this way, and I shouldn't have this part, and it should be this part. And at the same time, you don't have to get in there and just let every part take you over. You could just say, all right, I'm a little more objective, a little more just observing who else? And, oh, what do you feel about that? And just get to know some of these parts and just let it unfold. You don't have to follow any particular rigid framework or anything, just start to engage in and then of course if you want to go further, highly recommend Jay Early's book Self Therapy. You can get it on Amazon, Audible, I believe they even have an audio version as well on Audible. So you can really study this stuff and then go further with it if you want, but at the very least just start to talk to the parts inside of there. Awesome. Thanks for being with me today. Until we speak again, may you have the courage to be who you are and to know on a deep level that you're awesome.

Thanks for listening to Shrink for the shy guy with Dr. Aziz. If you know anyone who can benefit from what you've done, just heard, please let them know and send them a link to shrinkforthshyguy.com for free blogs, ebooks and training videos related to overcoming shyness and increasing confidence, go to social confidencecenter.com.

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