🧑‍🏫 Experiencing the Life-Changing Magic of Internal Family Systems w/ Derek Haswell

Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. Lovely to see your faces. Hey, Karina. Hey, Vincent. Hey, Jesse. Tarek. Hey, Trevor. Hey, Erica.

This guy's the.

Hey, Venus. I will be starting at three minutes past the hour as usual and in the meantime, invite you to share your day in a six word story so far. How has your day been in a six word story?

I'm seeing your mouth moving, but I'm not hearing you.

Oh.

We can hear you, Johnny.

Great. Thanks. Ocean. Sort your speaker out.

Sa.

Foreign.

Okay. Well, welcome everyone. Welcome to our. What is it, Wednesday? Wednesday live session with Mr. Derek as well. I'm just gonna spot you, Derek. Welcome, Derek. It's. It's amazing to have you here.

Thanks so much for having me, Johnny. Delighted to be here.

So, before I give you the floor and the microphone, just by way of introduction, Derek is. Derek is my coach. Derek is my executive coach. He is a co founder of 10 Happier, the meditation app. And more importantly for this session, he is a IFS internal family systems wizard. Or at least that's how I think of you. Anything else that feels relevant to share about you and perhaps before I step away, how did you come to ifs and what is it about this particular practice that made you think?

Right.

I really want to focus on this in my life and in my work.

Amazing. Yeah, I'll answer both of those questions. The only other thing to know about me is we, my wife and I are high school sweethearts. We have three kiddos, and we are, thanks very much, starting a. A budding farm as well. So I like to joke that I'm the husband of a farmer. It's my most important role right now.

And you guys just secured 100 acres like yesterday.

That's right. That's right. The operation grows. Thank you. And then, yeah, the way that I talk about my if, my journey to discover parts work and ifs is after 7 years of starting a meditation company and going deep, deep, deep into meditation, my wife remarked that I was getting more and more miserable. And I noticed it too. I felt like I was waking up to all the ways that I was uniquely broken as a person. It was no longer going under the radar. And it was when I discovered parts work that it felt like all of the awareness that meditation helped me cultivate had some place to go. And. And it was probably a month after I discovered parts work that I caught my wife listening to the audiobook about parts work, and I was like, oh, I must have done something right describing it or I sold it right, or whatever, because that wasn't a common thing for her to go down a path that she saw me going down. And it wasn't until two years later she was like, no, the. The reason that I got interested in that stuff because I wanted to understand what was. Had changed my husband so much in such a period of time. And so that was about five years ago and I just descended in the way that I descend into things and have so enjoyed it as a practitioner solo and with incredible teachers, and then pursued training in it, which I've done two rounds of, including with Steve March, who I know you all met. And I find it incredibly impactful in not just our inner work, our inner world, but how we're showing up to the things and the people that we care about the most. So I'm a passionate sharer of these things.

Beautiful. Well, we've teased part to work and internal family systems on many occasions in the last four weeks. And yeah, I think something that I love about it as well is it's. So there's almost like a creative element to it as well. And there's like a fun element or like a playful element that I find as refreshing in many of these modalities. Can be a little bit serious sometimes doing the work. And it's like something about. At least the way that I've encountered ifs is it feels fun, feels playful, and it's something that kids almost do naturally.

I love it, Johnny. Yeah. And that's maybe a good transition into just today's workshop. I thought, how might we want to do this? And instead of a lecture or a conversation or a super heady discussion, that it would be more fun for us to explore some of this terrain and experience it together. So got a couple exercises planned for you all. I hope you have your. Your, your drama tools with you and we'll get to try on this way of looking, of kind of trying out parts and seeing what it looks and feels like for us. So. So where I thought I'd start, Johnny, if it's okay if we just dive right in.

Yeah, I mean, I'll take that as my keys. Just get out of the way and you can. You can have the stage.

So the first question I'd love to, I'll ask and then I'll call on some folks and I'd love to hear some. Some voices from is why is happiness so hard? In a time, in a culture when we're surrounded by so much abundance, why is happiness so hard? And I'd love to see if there are any hands that go up.

Or.

Even Bruno, you might just start calling on some folks. Hey.

Looking. I was just looking for the hand up. There are. I mean, it's, it's, it's funny. I, I've said this probably for a month now here. And where the mind is, is Teflon for good things and Velcro for crap. My take on this is, is.

I.

I'm a huge fan of Harari and he, he claims, and I think there's some truth in that, that we, if evolution pushed us this way in some aspect.

Right.

Because if back in the day, if you're happy, you're dead. So we were constantly looking like millennia. There's, there's, there's, there's thousands of years of us evolving, looking for stuff, looking for, if I'm not worried, I should be worried. And this kind of stuck now and then our brain still interprets incorrectly signals somebody is raising their voice and we feel like, oh, I'm gonna die now. And the chemistry of the body just goes into that. So that's one.

I love it. Bruno. Yes. Yeah. Just to play that back to you, the evolution wired us for survival, not for thriving. That's totally part of the mix as well.

It's a struggle to, to rewire that.

Yeah, yeah.

Just say you're a dumbass.

Just.

No, you're fine.

Yeah.

Oh, we'll get into what you just did there. So I love it. Thank you for the share shame. All right, Erica, I see a hand up. I'd love to hear from you. Yeah, sorry about that.

Yeah, the. What I was going to say is kind of the opposite of what Bruno was saying. So he's talking about evolution. The first thing that came to mind was where we are now as a society and the word should and how it shows up in our daily lives. If we should be doing this often revolved around comparing ourselves to others, people which distracts from our own internalizing of our happiness. So for myself, I've been just trying to like, pull off of social media, care a little less about what other people think. It's very hard in today's society. So for me it just all revolves.

Even if somebody asked me, amazing, amazing, beautiful, beautiful work and such a lovely demo. Just to welcome people into this way of looking. This is a. You'll be sick of me saying this. The way that we're in relationship with these inner parts, it's what governs how we show up for the world. And the more that we can build trust, appreciation, love, dare I say, but not necessarily letting them drive the show the smoother our inner world gets. So Alexi, thank you so much. I really appreciate it and we all do too.

All right, Derek, thank you again.

Thank you. Does anyone else have any questions about jumping in and doing this partner exercise? I think maybe what you saw. I followed the script for the most part. You saw me pull on the optional. If there's any hint of judgment, you can welcome the other part too. There is a little a part that chimed in that was judgmental of the brown mouse and we just kind of welcomed it. But does anybody have any questions about this, this exercise before we we hop into breakouts and and join it? How do you choose which. Which one? I assume Trevor, you mean which part. The encouragement is just to choose whichever is most accessible and, and let the client system move in that direction. Sorry, not flying. Your partner, your listener system. I'm just in coaching speak. Okay, Johnny, I'd love to send everyone off into breakout groups. I wonder if we can set maybe a, a 16 minute timer. We'll do eight minutes per side and so land and decide who's going to go first. Actually Johnny, if it could be a 17 minute timer. I'm sorry. So you can have the first minute decide who's going to go first and then halfway through Johnny or I will send a message to the group. So you know, it's time to switch sides. And you can switch sides from being the listener to being the explorer or vice versa. Okay, I'm going to wish you all well have some fun with this exercise and we'll see you all to discuss in 20 minutes or so.

Okay, you guys should see notifications inviting you to break it room. I will see you guys in 17 minutes time.

Hey everybody. Welcome back. Welcome back to the main room. All right, so we've got a couple minutes here to bring things to a close. I'd love to hear if anyone would be willing to share what just happened. And an invitation if there are questions too. So let's see if we can do some rapid fire things to bring thing home. Things home. Christian, I see your hand up.

Yeah, I was just saying to my partner that like I didn't have any experience of like wow, everything changed. Whatever. No sudden emotional somatic switch. But at the end, you know, I've done a lot like years of work with like trying to figure out the saboteur that's always just there. Like trying to me up and trip me up. That's what it feels like. And it's like trying to find out who he is, why he's Doing it has always been a mystery. And you know, all these different programs and whatever, it just remains that esoteric friend that hates my guts for some reason. I tell it to off and it just doesn't listen to me. And this time it kind of opened up a channel communication and like also understanding. Okay, I get it. I see what you're trying to do. So at least even if I don't think like suddenly my problems are resolved now I at least have someone I can go talk to instead of like talking to HR and they rebound me to like some company and wherever and they're like, well, we don't speak your language but you know, call back between hours of 5, 6. I love it at least makes it a little bit better for me.

An opening trailhead Christian, also, I don't know if the same background zoom background designer for you and Johnny are the same but man, I feel like this is a doppelganger. It's amazing. Well done. True.

Truth is I copied him, so I liked him. What works, works.

I love it. I love it. Thank you for sharing, Christian. Really appreciate it.

Thank you.

Opening Adrian.

It was very nice to to share and I and I feel that it's more manageable to sort out whatever I was sharing. But I have a quick question because while I was telling about the two part and the issue at hand, I had a different set of parts coming in and it was like a totally different conversation.

Yeah.

So what to do then? Because I felt confused because I wanted to give the proper attention to the issue I was presenting and then I've got another conversation going. So what to do then? That was funny.

Yeah.

Adrian, I super appreciate you sharing that and it gives me a chance just to share a little bit more, which is oftentimes our parts come in constellations. There are two or three or more parts that are connected to one another, either working with or against one another. And some of you probably experienced a little bit of this and, and it's not uncommon. It's. It's one of the things that's hard about constraining it to an 8 minute container and hoping you're able to get through a thank you to one of the parts. It just doesn't work out sometimes. But it sounds like whatever the conversation was happening with the one constellation of parts, another constellation showed up. And so in this type of work with a bigger container, you'd have a chance to welcome that other constellation or other parts that showed up and then you can kind of see and this is a key in parts Work is you're almost just asking your system which of you wants to go first, and then you're moving wherever that goes. So it's a very consensual process of just like, who wants to speak up? Who needs some love here in a way that allows you to work with whatever's present instead of having. Keeping the agenda. But no, I came for this other part. Does that make sense when you hear me play that back?

Yeah. So. So basically, if I have more time, I can invite like another set of friends to, to join the room, right?

That's right. And then. And then at some point, one of them will take the spotlight on stage and you can get to know that one, and then you can do that one at a time.

Nice. Amazing.

Yeah, thank you. Thanks for the question. Adrian. Trevor, over to you.

Well, so I was. So I ended up going in the direction of. I feel like my judge or protector type art has been more present in my life. And I went the other direction with what I would call like a muse or a sage, I'll call my muse. But what was so interesting was how vivid and easily accessible and like that, like the immediate imagery and like the feeling from that part. And it was connected to love and like wanting to love and be loved and. And it just completely changed, like my entire state. And then that. It was just right there. And then it was like, wow, you. You're just like hiding in plain sight and you're, you're. You're just right there to. To access. I thought that was super interesting.

Amazing. Trevor, thank you so much for sharing. Try explaining this at the Thanksgiving table. When you're trying to describe what you do, people are like, what these things, but that this is just an inner dynamic. It's like for some folks, again, it's talk. Some folks, it's somatic. They respond. These parts of us respond when we tune into them, and it changes a lot of things. So this is just a very powerful and very possible way of working with our inner system. I'm glad to hear that you had the chance to experience some of that.

Nice.

Thanks for the share. Okay, we're going to do just one more, Jesse, and then we'll. I'll. I'll talk as we bring things to a wrap. I'm sorry, Bruno and Alexi. Jesse.

Hi, Derek.

Thank you.

I have to apologize for my bad video quality. It's quite late here in Germany. It's already dark. But I have a more general question on ifs that I'm hoping might round this out nicely. I've personally been working with it for quite a few years, but on my own we don't have any, don't have that great resources for IFS therapists here. I recently discovered what I think is a part, but it has many characteristics of what Dick Schwartz would describe as the self. And I'm sort of struggling a little bit to discover if this is a part or the simple fact it's a question tells me it is a part. But it has the, it's a very compassionate, very calm, very curious part. It shows in my head as Dumbledore and it's so it's, it's become a really helpful resource for me to bring in when my other parts are freaking out and struggling and especially when I'm dealing with exiles who are stuck in bad times. I'm wondering, yeah, I guess where, where that comes in, where it rolls in as a is itself, is it part? What would be your opinion on that?

Yeah, the, the. There are a couple possibilities here, Jesse. So it's hard to say without having the chance to explore. The two things I'll offer is sometimes there are self like parts, which is what you're alluding to. These are parts that take on qualities or aspects of self. And I really feel like it's important for them to try to help out the system. The key with those self like parts is to get curious about their agenda. What is it, how is it that they're trying to help you? What's important to them? And just keep on asking those questions about highest intentions and biggest fears. Sounds like you're familiar with the framework. So that would be the first conduit or avenue that I would go down. And then, you know, the second is sometimes there are, in this work there are parts that show up that seem just beautifully well intentioned without any agenda whatsoever. It just seems like they're there to help. And I have learned from my teachers and the work itself that welcoming the help of those can be very powerful. The work together. So sometimes it's not, you don't need to chase it down and know, okay, it's this part and it da da da da da. So there's a. I don't have a concrete answer for you, but it's the spirit of curiosity is the, is the path forward with a part or a self like part or another part that's just kicking around your system to help? Does that make sense?

I think that vocabulary self led part is. That's new to me. That sounds like that's a new area that I can dig down into. So thank you for that and for everything else tonight.

You're welcome. Yeah, a self like part is Google hit YouTube for that and you'll learn more. But hey, thank you all so much for having me. I'll connect with Johnny. I have some resources for you all just to be able to check out if you want to continue practicing this work on your own or learning about it. There's podcasts and books. But really appreciate your time. This is amazing. Johnny, thank you so much.

Dude, thank you so much. And one thing I just wanted to mention briefly is Lorraine mentioned that she would be interested in connecting with other students one on one. So to experiment with parts work stuff. So if you would like to continue exploring this deeper with fellow students, please message Ocean and we will set that up for you guys. But Derek, thank you so much. This is phenomenal. I'd like to close with on the count of three, everyone unmuting and saying my constellation of parts wants to thank your Constellation of parts. 3, 2, 1. Constellations. Thank you, Derek. All right, take care everyone.

Thank you all so much, everyone. Thank you.