Hi everybody. I'm back for my third audio in this series the Multiplicity of the Mind. I've been introducing you to parts of who we are and concepts around that. Chiefly understood in the framework of Internal Family Systems Therapy and its ideologies. If you recall in the previous two audios, I talked about the three different parts or types of parts. So we have protectors, and that might be divided up into manager parts which are more proactive and pre-emptive. And then there are more reactive protectors, which we call firefighters. They, yeah, they're more reactive and impulsive. So, the types of problems that those protectors can cause us differs wildly.So, for example, a typical firefighter type of protection might be through addiction behaviors, which might lead to a manager part becoming more critical or shaming. Or self-harm is another common behavior that we might see from a firefighter, or chronic suicidality, or thoughts around risk. And managers tend to be more, as I say, proactive and try to be more motivated, but can put the system under strain by pushing too hard. Not truly understanding the impact on the person or self.

Now, I want to talk today in this audio a bit more about the other category, and that is what we call exiled parts. Now have a think. Think about, whether or not you have a memory from the past, a strong memory. It doesn't necessarily need to seem overtly traumatic. You might even consider it to be just a bad thing that happened, and feel that you might have gotten over it. But if there's a memory that you have, which keeps pushing itself forward, and when you revisit it, and again, not necessarily through flashbacks. But if you keep revisiting that, and when you do you feel some sort of pain or sadness. Then, what IFS would understand is; that is the exiled part trying to show you that it needs to be healed. Is the brain trying to lead you towards some sort of healing. You know, it's probably a different audio in itself. But the brain naturally wants to heal and it's just that there are various things that often get in the way of that process. So, what do we do when we have pain come up from the past? We tend to suppress it, or criticize ourself, or push it down, or maybe we dissociate from it.

And that's why we call these exiles, because the pain remains exiled. It's painful memories from the past, which we have dissociated from in some way, disconnected from. And these, often much younger parts remain stuck in pain, in shame, fear, or maybe trauma. And as I say, they are usually from childhood. And managers and firefighters try to exile these parts from our consciousness, to stop the pain coming to the surface. We seek to unburden this in IFS, we seek to unburden the pain. Dick Schwartz would describe this as a process of identifying and releasing the extreme emotional belief that a part carries. And it's called unburdening. And in IFS, it's equivalent to healing the part. So, unburdening is a process that we go through in in IFS, by going through sort of a semi meditative state, or a guided discovery in a meditative state, to try and find our way to the exile. To maybe negotiate our way past stubborn or bullish protectors. To get access to the pain.

And there are very specific techniques that we could use to help unburden that part. Sometimes that can be tricky, because you know, we might have some very stubborn parts which want to get in the way and don't want us to get access to it. So, for example, a common condition for that might be OCD, is commonly a protector part, which is trying in some way to distract us from the real pain. That's just one example. but I wanted to spend the rest of this audio, just sort of thinking a bit more about how there is that interaction between parts that are in pain and how that might come out.

On the surface, or in a protector behavior, protector driven behavior. So for example, a very common one might be that there's a part which is holding the burden, that one is ugly, or they have an ugly body or a shameful body in some way. What that might look like is that when that part gets stuck holding that belief, there might be a manager part, for example, which seeks to overcompensate by not eating enough, or being overly controlling around food. You might see some emerging eating problems, more extremely eating disorders. Conversely though, it might be a firefighter that seeks to protect that. And you might see addictions or you might see disordered eating. So obesity might be a problem. So that eating disorder or disordered eating might be what the world sees or what the people around that person who's struggling might see. They might even get it classified as some mental health condition, an eating disorder. But actually, it's really about what's underneath. And it's very difficult to help those managers and those firefighters to change, until some healing of that exile has taken place. So that's just one example, but there are hundreds I could give you.

But I just really wanted to get you thinking about that, and we'll talk about this in the next audio where we think about how people with ADHD might be affected by their condition, and how that might have formed some exiles for you. Thank you.