Childhood Conditioning: Breaking the Cycle of Self-Sabotaging Behaviors Learned Early in Life

Have you ever found yourself caught in a vicious cycle, doing things that you know really good for you, but feeling like you just can't stop? You know, like binge eating, addiction, procrastination on important tasks, lashing out when you're angry, but you don't really want to maybe lash out at your kids or your spouse or something like that. If so, you're in good company. We all have certain self sabotaging behaviors, and most of these behaviors are rooted in childhood coping mechanisms. There are parts of ourselves that were created or formed to help us survive difficult childhood situations. But in some ways these coping mechanisms can really hold us back from living our best lives and being our true selves. Today we're going to be talking about a framework, it's kind of a counseling framework to help you understand and conceptualize these different coping mechanisms as being parts of yourself and talking about what to do with those. This framework is called internal family systems therapy usually, and you can sometimes you hear it abbreviated if it's the IFS model. When we think about our childhood, even if we don't think we have like a super abusive childhood or anything like horrible that you might consider like super traumatic, we've all had difficult experiences that shape us in good ways and in not so good ways. So just because you have some of these coping mechanisms doesn't necessarily mean something super duper horrible happened to you. It can just mean it's the ways that you developed to deal with situations that came up in your early childhood. And the reason why most of this comes from childhood is because most of these coping mechanisms are very sort of ingrained, they're hardwired. If you think back, it's probably something that you've struggled with for most of your life that you can remember. And it goes back to sometimes things subconsciously, like maybe even things before you have memory. You don't even maybe remember what happened, but you know that you have these certain patterns of behavior, patterns of feelings, patterns of reacting to certain situations, and some of those you wish you could get rid of. The root of those usually comes from parts of ourselves that the IFS model calls exiles. Like as in you've been exiled from the country exiles. These are parts of ourselves that usually are deep wounded insecurities, anxieties, and they may feel like they come out of nowhere, but they're usually attached to somewhat painful memories or experiences. You may have a persistent inner critic, makes you feel terrible all the time. You feel like you have unexplained, that you can't quite Explain. Those parts of ourselves called the ex are like the little wounded children, part of ourselves that didn't have the skills to cope with whatever it was that was going on in life. And as we go through this, I don't want you to think this isn't some kind of beating up on your parents or any kind of blaming parents. This, this stuff can come from parental stuff, but it can also come from stuff that happened with your siblings, stuff that happened in preschool or early, you know, elementary school or even with your siblings. So it's just dealing with life stuff. And when we're so young, we don't have the capacity to understand, conceptualize, pick how we respond to things. We're just emotionally reacting to things in a very instinctual, natural kind of way. But we develop these patterns and habits of getting our needs met and protecting ourselves. And these exiles are usually parts of ourselves that we, we don't, we don't necessarily like, we kind of reject them and that's why they're called exiles. It's these parts of ourselves that we try to keep at bay. Right? Like, it's like, you know, if you ever feel like you just want to have a fit, you just want to, you know, scream rage, hit the wall and you know, like, that's not the way an adult acts. You can't act like that. You know, you have to be a parent, you have to be a wife here, you got to be a grown up. And so we try to push these parts of ourselves away, but that doesn't always work so effectively. It's like, it's like if you think about, if you have a child in a family system, an external family system that's acting out, you can't just tell that child to shut up or kick them out of the family or send them away or ignore them, it doesn't work so well. The more you do that, the more they act up. If you are a family therapist and you had a family that came to see you and they had a child or one of the members was acting out or causing the problems, the family would be telling you, you wouldn't necessarily just say, okay, we've identified the problem, we gotta get you out of here. And this family would be all right. That's not the way it works. You usually, if someone in a family is acting out in a way, there's some kind of need that's not being met, some kind of coping mechanism that's maybe more self destructive than helpful, and you have to address what that is. So these same way with your internal family systems, these parts of yourself that you're trying to suppress, that you're trying to shut out, that you wish would just go away. They're not just going to go away. You can't just do that. These are parts of yourself that you need to figure out what's going on and have a better way of dealing with them. Just like you would a child in a family system, you know, that was having a hard time. From these exiles, you get other protective parts of yourself, which we're going to talk about in just a minute. We're going to call those firefighters and managers. But hang on to that, we're going to come back to that because before we get into the protector parts, I want to talk to you a little bit about some of the things that can create these exile parts of ourselves. Hold on, I'm looking at my notes if y' all are wondering what I'm. Because this is a lot of information I'm giving you got a lot of notes here. Obviously these exiles can come from abuse or neglect. That would be the most obvious situation that, that would come to mind when you think about like childhood trauma. But it's not always so severe as that. It can come from significant losses in your childhood, like a family member that was lost or maybe you had a nanny for the first, you know, year or two of your life and then, and then that nanny wasn't there anymore. These significant loss, it can be divorce, separation, loss of a sibling, friendship, communities. Maybe when you were really young, your family moved to another country, right? This is a significant loss you might not relate to as being like traumatic or abuse, but it's important stuff that happened in your childhood or any kind of shaming experience where you were made fun of, ridiculed, humiliated, you were bullied or excluded or rejected during school or at home. Any kind of situation that made you feel wrong or not good enough or different than or disconnected from the group. These memories have a huge impact on us and we all have them and we all develop different ways of coping with those kind of situations. Other kind of things that can create exiles would be overwhelming circumstances like growing up in a really high stress community environment or poverty or in a war torn area when war is going on in the country where you, where you grew up, having to take on adult responsibilities as a child. Maybe you grew up and you had a single mom or maybe you grew up and there were, you know, 10 brothers and sisters and you had to be, you were one of the older ones and you had to Be more responsible or another overwhelming situation can be something like dealing with chronic illness or disability or other hardships that can come during your childhood. Even a pretty serious lack of validation or attunement can create these exile coping parts of ourselves. Like if you have parents who are very emotionally distant or unresponsive or preoccupied, which can come from lots of different things, Maybe you have a parent who was really depressed. Maybe you have a parent who just lost their parent and they were grieving. Maybe you have a single parent, right? There's a lot of reasons that aren't necessarily the person being a bad parent that could cause them to be not as in tune with you maybe as you maybe needed as a child. You know, anytime you were feeling like your emotions and your needs and your experiences weren't heard or attended to or validated and just a general lack of safety and comfort during your childhood can create these exile parts of ourselves. One of the most, I think, easiest and one of the most quickest natural ones I connect to is you hear people sometimes say that they have an attachment wound, right? That attachment wound comes from somewhere in childhood, right? And now you can see it playing out in adulthood. This is one of those ones we actually have a label for, we have a title for. And when I say it, we. We kind of all have an idea of what that means. But there's a lot of other different kinds of exiled parts of ourselves. These are sort of emotions usually that are triggered in certain circumstances in adulthood and a lot of times in ways that we kind of wish they wouldn't. And that creates the protector parts of ourselves. And we're going to call, we're going to put those in a couple of categories in the IFS model, they call them firefighters and managers. You guys give me just one second. I'm gonna have to open my door and let my dog out. I don't know if y' all can hear him whining, but it's driving me crazy. Two sex. There we go. If I don't let him in, he fusses. And then if he shut any fusses, he likes to have the option. Don't we all? Alright, back to the protectors, the firefighters and the managers. Let's start with the firefighters. Let me move my notes up a little bit so I can stay on track here. If you tend to have any of these kind of behaviors, it's probably a firefighter part of yourself. Like for example, overeating or binge eating or eating when you're emotionally stressed or excessive alcohol or drug use. I know there's some of us watching the channel that struggle with that, right? Impulsive shopping, gambling or compulsive pornography, or engaging in self harm behaviors like cutting or even procrastination of tasks. Maybe you have a habitual way that you just procrastinate. Maybe you like go on social media and you get in the social media vortex for hours and hours and hours. These are almost like self soothing or numbing parts of ourselves. And we oftentimes get frustrated at these parts of ourselves. But these are coping strategies that developed as a way of dealing with those really intense emotions of the exile parts of ourselves. Hopefully this is coming together a little bit. I know it's a lot of information to absorb, but we all have different ways, different firefighters that work for us. And then we get, we get mad at ourselves when we binge Netflix, you know, for five hours instead of being productive. We get mad at ourselves when we numb out and we're unproductive or we engage in that addictive behavior one more time. It's like we do it and then after the fact we're mad at ourselves. And so we then try to, A lot of us try to shut down or ignore or push out these firefighter parts of ourselves. And again, that doesn't work so well. What's a better strategy is to realize that these are parts of yourself that are trying to help you in some way and to do a better job of acknowledging these coping mechanisms, these parts of yourself. We'll talk a little bit more in a minute, but sometimes it's helpful to even name these parts of yourself so that you can visualize them and you can have an understanding of them so you can better deal with them. Because the firefighters are there for a reason. They're there to protect you somehow. And so instead of getting mad at the exiles and then getting mad at the firefighters who are trying to protect the exiles, we got to do a better job of that. A lot of us are in this New Year cycle where we're trying to set New Year's resolutions and I'm going to do better at this and I'm going to stop doing that and I'm going to do more of this. And probably something that you're setting a resolution about is some kind of long lasting pattern about yourself. Chances are that long lasting pattern comes from some of these parts that we're talking about today. And it's not a, it's not going to work to just try to get rid of it. We have to deal with those things in a Different way, which is why we're talking about this today. Now, another kind of protector part that we have is our managers. And they kind of managers seem very sort of opposite as firefighters. Firefighters think of them as sort of the parts of you that just want to self soothe, right? Just want to feel better, just want to kind of numb or disconnect or not deal with. Right? And then you have the managers, which are like the bosses or the parents, right? And these are the part of yourself where you tend to be really critical of yourself or push yourself. You may feel a need to be perfect or in control or above judgment. You may have workaholic tendencies. You may not be able to switch off being productive. You may have rigid black or white thinking or lack flexibility in certain areas of your life. You may be dealing with. You may have difficulty dealing with difficult emotions and asking for help. And as a way of dealing with those feelings, those exile feelings, we have, these managers that come in, these tend to be the parts of ourselves that lean towards micromanagement, criticism, judgment. It's that part that's kind of constantly pushing yourself to do better. In my mind, when I. When I think about this, I relate it to like old school, like Freud stuff, like Freud philosophy, like the id, the ego and the super ego, right? This would be sort of the super ego part. This is the part that's trying to keep you on task, manage doing all the things. This is a responsible part of you. But you got to realize this is just another way of coping with difficult emotions. Are you more of a person that the firefighters take front stage more often, or are you more of a person that the manager parts of you takes center stage more often. You may feel like, well, if you're. If you're a person that has more of a manager style, you may feel like, oh, that's a responsible person. They're doing it right. And if they're doing the numbing or addictive behaviors, you know they're doing it wrong or they're being immature, they're not coping or something like that. But these are both maladaptive, often counterproductive coping mechanisms. Because just like you can, you know, get yourself in some kind of social media vortex, and that's not always productive. You can just as easily get into workaholism over criticism, perfectionism. You can get into eating disorder land, right? Like, you can go way far into the manager category, and that's not helpful for you either because it tends to destroy your sense of self. And when you're really critical of yourself, guess what you tend to be really critical of other people. So this manager part of yourself is not only like really crazy hard on you, but it's crazy hard on other people, which then damages your relationships, which then triggers those exiles. And it's like, how am I going to jump back in there and cope with this? So when we think about those different categories of parts of ourselves, they're not our self, you know, our self is sort of bigger than all that. Those are just little sub personalities or sub parts of ourselves that we can learn to think about them as separate parts. We can actually have conversations with those parts of ourselves. We can actually do a better job of almost like parenting those parts of ourselves, like re parenting to give that part of yourself maybe what it needed in childhood, but it never got so that it can quit acting out. Because that's basically what's happening. It's an acting out, right? It's like an acting out child who's not getting their needs met, right? And if you think about an acting out child, a child that's really maybe scared for some reason, right. What does that child need? That child needs a parent to come in and help it feel safe and protected and say the right things, right. And intervene when you need to intervene. And if, if you didn't have that as a child and you were going through things that were super scary, then chances are you might have developed one of these protector parts of yourself, these protector mechanisms as a way of dealing with that. Because maybe you didn't have a parent that protected you in a way that you needed to be protected. But the good news is, is we can actually go back and help ourselves do this. One of the things I really love about internal family systems therapy is, is that you can learn to do this with yourself. In my mind, I almost imagine like yourself is like the therapist who's doing therapy with the family, which are the other parts in the room. And you're trying to help all those other parts, like have a say and be heard. And you're trying to mediate between all those other parts that's yourself. So it's like this other part that's almost helpful to think about, like disconnected from that, that's overseeing and overlooking all that. That's your true self that can kind of do a better job of meeting the needs of these other parts of yourself. One of the things that's helpful to do in working with the parts is to. Sorry, I'm just moving my notes up here, is to have compassion for these parts, to recognize and appreciate what these parts are trying to do for you, instead of just constantly trying to push them away, to have a conversation with them, to slow down and give space to whatever these emotions are that are triggering these behaviors that you really wish you didn't have, or these patterns that you wish you could break out of. So many of us or so many of you guys that watch this channel are watching either because your firefighters are in control, because you're having some kind of addictive problem that you're trying to get rid of, or maybe you're watching because your managers are in control, because maybe you have an addicted loved one and you're trying to manage your way out of it, right, by being responsible and doing all the right things. And you're watching the channel to learn all the right things. And in a way, that's really good. I'm glad you're watching. I'm glad you're doing that. But I also want you to recognize that you can get too far into that. You can be really critical of yourself. Maybe you're trying to help an addicted loved one. You watch an Amber video, you're trying to do it right, and then you. You get resentful, or something triggers you, and you say and do all the wrong things, and then you start beating yourself up. And now you have the manager in place, and that's not helpful. And we have to have compassion for these parts that are just doing the best that they can do. And if you'll do a better job of having compassion for these parts and recognizing what's really happening here, it actually calms down the chaos in your internal. Your inside family system. Sometimes I like to visualize it like I call it the committee. It's almost like I visualize this big boardroom table, right? This big, long conference table, and you have these different people sitting at it. Or, you know, the other way is like a therapy room where you have the therapist and you have the family in there and letting everybody be heard, right? And recognizing that everybody in the room has an important piece to contribute. Like I said before, the answer isn't to push these pieces away or minimize while they're there or even judge or criticize them. The. The answer is to realize what is really happening. If you have an addictive behavior, it is most likely some kind of firefighting defense mechanism, right? Some kind of way that you're trying to cope with something difficult or some kind of way you're trying not to cope with something difficult. Maybe that's even a better way to say it. And that's an okay thing. That's a good thing. If you don't have those. If you don't have the ability to just distract and numb out and just get through a difficult time, that's not a good thing. We all have to have that ability. So it's not about pushing it away, necessarily, or ignoring it or suppressing it. It's more about realizing, stopping to say, okay, the firefighters working right now, the firefighters in control right now, you know, they have. They're standing up, they're at the conference, taking control of everything, right? They're at the helm. And what is this firefighter trying to do for you? Now, that doesn't necessarily mean that you give yourself permission to continue to engage in these addictive behaviors that you're trying to shift patterns on. But you can say, what is it that's triggering the firefighter to jump into action here? What is the underlying emotion, feeling, situation that I'm feeling triggered by or overwhelmed by? And what is it that I really need here? How can I do a better job of dealing with that exiled feeling versus trying to have to numb it out? Right? And so oftentimes, what I tell my clients, when they say they're triggered or they're craving or something's happening, and we try to explore what's really going on here. Was it just something you saw on a movie, some you came across, other people were doing, and you got triggered that way, or is it an internal trigger? Is it some kind of emotion or stressful situation that you're dealing with? And I try to teach people to look at that craving as like a warning indicator that they need something. Now they have this automatic where they like, I need the drug, I need the pornography, I need to drink or whatever, but that's not actually what you need. What you need is some kind of relief or reprieve from something that's going on. And if you just stop and you ask your firefighter, you ask yourself, you say, you know, what is it you're seeking relief from, right? What is it you're going toward? What is it you really want right here and find another way to meet that need. Now, you've paid attention to that need a lot more effectively instead of just trying to suppress it and hold it and not think about it and overrule it, because it's almost like it's like a little kid in there throwing a fit. And the more you try to suppress it and ignore it, the louder and louder it's going to get, right? If you're just telling Yourself, all day, every day, don't do it, don't do it. Don't drink, don't smoke. Whatever it is, it's almost like it's just going to get louder and louder and louder. So a craving or a trigger or a thought about using, our desire to use or engage in addictive behavior, it's not necessarily a bad thing, it's just a signal. Think of it like the gas light in your car coming on, right? The answer to that isn't to ignore the fact that you need gas. The answer to that is to pull over, go to the gas station and put some gas in there, right? Because you can ignore it. You can put some tape over it so you can't see it. What's going to happen, you're eventually going to stop going, which is the same thing that's going to happen to you in your regular real life when you try to just ignore these behaviors or these parts of yourself. I should say, I know that this can get complicated, thinking about managers and firefighters and exiles, because this whole theory is pretty complicated. There's lots of pieces to it. But if you want to, if you're interested in it, you want to just get started with it, then one easy way to name these parts of yourself is just to say your angry part of yourself, your sad part of yourself, your ambitious part of yourself, your fun or excited part of yourself, right? We all know that we have parts of ourselves. And you can even hear yourself say it. Like maybe you get asked to go do something with a friend or something and then you're like, well, there's part of me that really wants to go, but then there's this other part of me that's like, I really got all this work I need to get caught up on. We know inherently that there are these different pieces of ourselves and I think it's super helpful to kind of almost like visualize them that way and have a conversation with them. It doesn't mean you're crazy, it doesn't mean you're talking to yourself. But we all have conversations with ourselves. Like I said, for me, it feels like there's a whole committee in there all the time having a conversation to figure out what's really going on and to meet the needs of all the different parts of ourselves. Alright, guys, I don't have as much time for questions today, but I am going to take just a couple. But before we take a couple of questions, I will remind you, as always, there are resources in the description of this video. We do have openings for January for strength based recovery coaching. If you're interested in that with me. There are links in the description. Of course we have our family membership always lots of stuff in there. So let's take a couple of questions before we run out of time. Let's see here. I don't have Bri on here with me today, so I'm having to navigate the comments for myself. Hey Sheriff from Sherry from Film Finland and hey Kristen from Colorado. Oh Sula from Ireland and Laura from Atlanta. You're like neighbors, Laura. You're just, you're just right there next door to me. And thank you for the sweet comment. Happy New Year, Teresa. Hey Kelly, I'm glad you're here live too. Ann says, let's see, let's put Anne's comment up here. And the manager is like a parent, workaholic, rigid thinking, micromanaging criticism to keep us on task with another way of coping. Well said and spot on. 100 gold stars. That's exactly right. What it feels like. That's what that part of you feels like for sure. And Cindy says the manager, part of her for sure is likes to take center stage. Thank you for the sweet comment, Shelby. And is it cv, Sandra and Laura? Let's see. Kim says, I think the time from trigger to reaction is so fast. I don't think you're so right, Kim. It can happen. It's like a reflex, right? But one of the things that can be helpful with that is if you, if you start to understand your triggers and you kind of know most of us know what our hot buttons are and you do this work before they ever happened, then you can catch it quicker and you're not caught off by surprise. And like I said, having little names for these parts, you can even give them like real life, like names like Susan or Helen. I suggest that you stay away from giving them a critical name like don't call it like Bossy Susan because that's another way of rejecting this part and more. Look at it as the part that's trying to help you. You can call it Organized Susan or something like that as a way of validating this part and recognizing what it's trying to do for you. Instead of giving it a negative name but naming it, you can say, oh, hello Susan, welcome to the meeting. You know, and just imagine Susan just raised her hand and contributed something to the meeting. You can recognize Susan a lot faster and you can put some time in between the trigger and the reaction because Kim is right. It happens quickly. Ms. Curry's neighborhood says amen thank you for validating the firefighter defense mechanism. That can be maladjustments. My in recovery loved one relative seem judgmental when he numbs out or craves harmful substances. Yes. And I even have clients that sometimes they. They're in recovery, maybe early recovery, and they'll be mad at themselves for procrastinating. They'll be mad at themselves for, you know, binging Netflix or something like that. And, you know, they're like, I'm just an addictive personality, and they see every little thing as this horrible part of themselves. And here it is happening to me again. And goodness knows, the families do that, but even the person themselves even do that, and I encourage them. What does it mean? Maybe you needed a break. Maybe you needed a break from the manager. Maybe your recovery is coming across like a manager. Right. Maybe your recovery is getting too harsh, too critical with you, and that's triggering some kind of need to bring in these firefighters. So recognizing it as a signal, as a symptom instead of this bad part that you're trying to ignore. CV says for 10 years, I'm reflecting on my son's school years, thinking we didn't give him tools for handling his emotions. He acts or is entitled. My bad. Is that my bad? Okay. I don't want you to get into a lot of blame. I don't care how good of a parent you are. You. We're human beings, and you're not. You don't have the ability to meet every single need of your child. We do the best we can. Right? But we also are dealing with a lot of other things, a lot of other needs from different people and from ourselves trying to meet. So I wouldn't get into this blame game. It's not gonna. It's not gonna be helpful, and I'm not sure that it's accurate. But instead of looking at him, as in my mind, when you say this cv, it's almost like you're saying like, he's spoiled, he's entitled, and maybe that's my fault. Instead of looking at that entitled or split, spoiled, maybe identify that as a part of your son. Right. And what is that part trying to do for him? Right. Maybe it's a way of feeling better about himself. Maybe it's a way of not dealing with insecurities. And when you think of. And you deal with that part that way, you're going to get a lot further than trying to just be like, you know, my kids have spoiled Brett, and he needs to learn a lesson or whatever, you know, looking at that as a part of your son versus who your son is is the first step in figuring out what's a better way to interact with that. Melissa. Hey, let's see. Melissa says thank you for being here for people like me in this season. I was lesson for learning how to help my I was listening to learn how to help my grandson get over being emotionally upset for being homeless with substance use disorder. Parents. This is for me. Yes. So what you're saying is you've got a grandson and is it your grandson is homeless. I understand what you're saying. His parents have substance use disorder and they're homeless. Is your grandson with you? Is he with them? And being able to respond to that child and the emotions that they're going through is the most helpful thing you can do. Maybe you can't fix everything, validate what they're going through and help them to develop some more healthier coping mechanisms. And I think you're going to do a great job of that, Melissa, because you're already so aware of what's happening. You're already so self reflective and insightful about the situation. Hey, Gio from Australia. We got people watching everywhere. That's so cool. So happy to find you on live being comforting, just listening to you. Just want to wish you and everyone here a wonderful healing new year. Well, thank you. Not here. That not here is the profile name. Thank you so much. All right, guys, let's see. Let's take one more from Mary. What do we say to our addicted loved one when he seems to be having a hard time? I guess it depends on what you mean by hard time. Does hard time in your mind, does that mean that they're relapsing? Does that mean that they're upset? Does that mean that they're stressed out? I think it's easiest to go to figuring out what's the part of themselves maybe that's interacting here. And how do I do a better job of interacting with that part? Just like you would look at it in yourself, how can I interact with that part more compassionately, more helpfully? Look at that same thing with your what part of them is having a hard time and what does that part really need? And is there something I can do to be helpful? You don't have to fix it. You don't have to have an answer. But just being compassionate and validating is a huge help because if you can help do that, maybe their firefighters won't need to jump in so much or their managers. All right, guys, we are out of time. For today. I have to run. I promised my son I would take him somewhere today. But I will be back on next week. We are on every Thursday at 1 and I look forward to seeing you then. As always, there are resources in description and I will see you next week. Bye, everybody.