Spiritual Bypassing: An Alternate Take

Much has been written already on the topic of spiritual bypassing. Not reinventing the wheel here for sure. But it’s been on my mind a lot lately. That’s usually a sign something’s wanting to come through about it. Let’s see what that is…

To my knowledge, the phenomenon was originally spotted (framed as Spiritual Materialism) by the Buddhist master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche in his classic work Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. And transpersonal writer and healing practitioner Robert Augustus Masters offered an honest treatment in his book Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects Us from What Really Matters.

Masters also elsewhere humorously referred to spiritual bypassing as “Avoidance in Holy Drag.” I howled when I heard that.

In any case, Masters wrote:

“When transcendence of our personal history takes precedence over our intimacy with our personal history, spiritual bypassing is inevitable. To not be intimate with our past- to not be deeply and thoroughly acquainted with our conditioning and its originating factors keeps it undigested and unintegrated, and therefore very much present.”

Meanwhile, the term spiritual bypassing is said to have been actually coined by author and Buddhist meditation teacher John Wellwood in the 80’s who described it as:

“…a tendency to use spiritual ideas and practices to sidestep or avoid facing unresolved emotional issues, psychological wounds, and unfinished developmental tasks.”

Spiritual bypassing therefore a form of denial, describing the way that we can essentially deceive ourselves into using spirituality to separate us from honestly feeling our emotions, and employ various aspects of spirituality in defending and deflecting from our faults and shadows. So it’s essentially what the term implies— an [unconscious] attempt to spiritualize away our emotions, internal conflicts, maladaptive character traits, compulsions or addictions, or our larger physical and relational real world experience— the boots on the ground problems in living we all must contend with here in earth school.

While there’s really not much new to add definitionally, or descriptively, as with almost everything, there are differing lenses in which to view and attempt to understand it.

(Later, I’ll off a view through the lens of Multiplicity/Polypsychism).

I should note that some aligned with the new age/lightworker community have argued, perhaps rightly, that the term itself— especially when hoisted upon others— is merely a judgment. Nothing more. Fair. But that’s just the surface. The tip of the iceberg. Because insofar as all judgments of others are in essence projected self-judgement, and the identification and exploration of what’s being held in contempt and/or disowned (and therefore ripe for projection) is the entirely of the berg underneath the water line—and the where the real opportunity for healing and integration begins.

Composite case example: ‘The Penultimate Buddhist’

There’s an anecdote of one self-proclaimed staunch, militant Buddhist (as oxymoronic as that may seem). Someone who displayed a reflexive habit of frequently injecting their seriously spiritual Buddhist self-identity into all conversations, and developed a reputation over time for being sharply, harshly critical of others who claimed, practiced, or spoke about Buddhism in any manner they perceived to be somehow inferior (clue) to their [ungrounded, grandiose] image as the measuring stick of what it means to be a true or real Buddhist.

Long story short, sources would have it that one day someone of erudite status within the particular Buddhist tradition they aligned with spotted and pointed out this toxic trait directly to them. It was done so in a way that was compassionate yet direct, incisive yet fair, and that encouraged fearless self-examination and transmutational exorcism of the internal source of the apparent need to act as the self-appointed “Buddhism Police,” as evidenced by this compulsive ‘calling out’ others with a gross lack of compassion. Something especially curious given that cultivation and demonstration of compassion is such an essential, revered quality in the philosophy and practice of all schools of Buddhism.

It appeared, as the story goes, that this quantum karmic cause and effect schooling landed so hard that they soon after wholly renounced Buddhism, under the apparent guise of no longer needing to align with [i.e. ostensibly suddenly transcending] any formalized tradition, philosophy or school of thought, reverting to a pathless, generalized agnosticism of sorts. And while there’s merit and wisdom in any sincerely arrived position of ‘no middle man required,’ this is considered a textbook psychospiritual case study of shame-based, emotionally driven, hostile reactionary throwing out the baby/neurotic solution to the pain of imposter-like exposure; of being faced with and having to own years of long-projected shadow-driven bypass (and all that it was masking) in action.

Had there been just a wee bit of felt access to internal security in the tenuous sense of spiritual identity, and a modicum of pre-existing esteem and self-compassion, this would have been a golden, true awakening-level opportunity for transformation into a more genuinely secure, relaxed, flexible, life-affirming personal spiritual odyssey— one more stably aligned with Buddhist tradition and practices, the beginning of a quiet confidence, and probably more of a “live and let live” harmonious interplay with fellow spiritual travelers.

Though it may appear to be, this anecdote itself is no casting of judgment. Rather, an albeit extreme case illustration of the curious yet common ways in which many a spiritual aspirant—from the newbie to the ‘fully enlightened’ master guru— subtlety (or not so) can become seduced and ultimately captured by the insidious lure of spiritual bypassing— as a protective psycho-emotional phenomenon. Just think of the numerous master yogis and spiritual teachers accused and often found guilty of perpetrating abuse of power crimes, usually of a sexual nature, upon their own disciples. The complex thirst for power/domination, the lust impulse, our very own sexual nature, when denied/repressed (or “exiled”) with the support of both cultural and spiritual taboo, are common fodder for spiritualization bypass attempts. And unfortunately wakes of victims are behind to recover from the wreckage.

Now, we all deny shit. We all project. We’re hard-wired for it, it seems. And we all judge, on the thought level at least. Full stop. And haven’t we’ve all engaged in at least a little though doth protest too much behavior, that which thinly veils— until it fails and ultimately reveals— our underlying self-doubt and insecurity in reference to that which is being so hotly protested?

Sometimes our projections and judgments latch on to the most unlikely of things, appearing in the most paradoxical, even downright *seemingly hypocritical of ways. Reinforcing once again, our utter humanity, including that which may be so ornately adorned in “holy drag” cannot mask forever. *And I say seemingly, because all hypocrisy, all hypocritical positions and attitudes existing within a person can be understood and reconciled when viewed simply as parts or subpersonalities maintaining extreme, polarized positions within the individual Self-System. (More on this later).

As one of my early professors taught, absolutely anything and everything can be used as a mechanism of defense; of self-protection. Even spirituality, spiritual identity, spiritual allegiance, spiritual pursuit, spiritual status, spiritual attainment, spiritual accomplishment— right down to the most simple, private spiritual practices themselves.

personal example

During the first wave of my spiritual emergence from the murky depths of my Dark Night of the Soul experience some years back, not long after the blistering energetic darkness-piercing Violet Flame infusion I received from my apparent Ascended Master gateway guide during a surrender-fueled meditation one day, I started to recognize that a part of me was trying desperately to latch on and ride that wave of bliss right into unearned, unintegrated transcendence, never to have to be bothered with the workaday world again.

In fact, the first video podcast I did (on a platform that no longer exists), when I went back and watched, showed it to me starkly. I was excited, riding the wave. And while coherent, I was clearly not fully grounded, half in the clouds. In a state of what in Transpersonal Psychology would be called ‘Transpersonal Elation.’ A bypass attempt on the part of some part of me was in full force effect.

Three years and many more mystical events and happenings notwithstanding, here I am. Still in the body. Awaken-ing, but far from enlightened. Just living, loving, consulting, providing therapy, receiving therapy, succeeding, failing, boxing training, communing with nature, meditating, surrendering, decreeing and initiating each and every day. Waxing on, waxing off. And better for it. Because, there is no bypass. No shortcuts. No ultimately successful ones anyway.

The longer we remain in the grips of a part of us bent on bypassing our normal everyday pain, responsibilities, normal human needs and desires, the heavier the lifting on the other side. And the longer the road to the heightened self-awareness, peace, emergence, transcendence, transformation, Shangri-La, or wherever it is we most hope for.

These are the kinds of things I help people with, along with psychedelic preparation and integration (important to avoid bypassing-ready parts of ourselves!) and the exploration and integration of all manner of mystical and non-ordinary experiences in my Spiritual Support specialty called Support for Extraordinary Experience (SEE).

signs and signals

How do we know if we are, or at risk of, spiritual bypassing?

On the most obvious surface level, maybe by and through the level of ferocity, rigidity or righteousness with respect to our spiritual views, practices, or identity. The more fierceness, humorless seriousness, the more inflexibility, defensiveness, need to explain, pronounce and proclaim, the more social imaging, grandstanding, sense of specialness and/or to the degree we become intolerant of others who may question, think, act or believe differently, the more there is, likely, bypassing at play.

Likewise, the more we might be ungrounded, not in our body/disembodied, floating up above it all, tending toward denying and discounting our worldly day to day needs, and striving to literally transcend [rather than befriend, integrate, transmute] our human faults, frailties, sensitivities, foibles, and problems— we might be well on the way to the airy fairly bypass express train, only to arrive at gate number rude awakening.

How else might we know?

For sure, through our projections. Our judgements. Specifically, by what we’re hotly reactive to in and about others.

An old saying in recovery is if you spot it you got it. More to the point, if you spot it and you’re immediately and intensely reactive to it, ya probably got it. Meaning what we’re reactive to is ours denied. Our issue being projected.

We are crazy, complex creatures, are we not?

modern spin

I look at many things through the lens of Multiplicity of Mind/Personality. This is the philosophical and psychological perspective that we are, paradoxically, both one and many; that we all have a Self (i.e. Larger Self, Authentic Self, True Self) and subpersonalities, or parts, as we call it in Internal Family Systems Therapy, or IFS.

Historically this view has been grossly misunderstood, stigmatized and psychiatrically pathologized. Fortunately, that’s changing, albeit slowly.

In any case, some parts are young, vulnerable child parts (exiles). Some are protectors (managers) of those young parts and our Larger Self. Other parts (firefighters) snap us into extreme action (dissociation, substance abuse, spending sprees, compulsive spending, etc) when our internal systems threatens emotional overload, so to speak. (In our case example above, a ‘firefighter’ part likely would have initiated the face-saving denouncement of Buddhism, ostensibly in a effort to keep the extreme burdens and beliefs that young, vulnerable exiled parts were carrying from overwhelming the system, that normal protector parts were beginning to fail in their task of keeping exiled).

In IFS, anything that’s not the Self (characterized by the qualities of calmness, clarity, curiosity, compassion, creativity, connectedness, and courage, for example) is a part. Meaning, when we feel much of the energy of Self, then our Self is driving the bus. When we feel a lot of anything other than qualities of Self (anger, shame, anxiety, sadness, etc), then the exiled part of us carrying those burdens for us are driving the bus, obscuring our sense of Self, and therefore, our connection and embodiment of our seat of consciousness, soul, or true spiritual core.

So can a part— a protective part of us— hijack our however otherwise innocent and pure spiritual intent, behavior, practices, or spiritually-based worldly identity in the service of protecting us from encountering another part of us that’s carrying a heavy load of something unpleasant, or inducing us to engage a behavior that would be say contrary to our idealized spiritual identity? You bet. And this is often precisely the internal psychic mechanism behind the bypass itself.

But our parts are not to blame. All parts are just doing their job. In fact, in this way of thinking, nothing and no one is to blame.

‘no bad parts’ / ‘all parts welcome’

This stance is what I love about the IFS model and approach. It takes this stance unapologetically and without exception that there are no bad parts of us. Of anyone. Just parts whose pain, burdens, and roles in the psyche/system are not yet understood. Parts who may be frozen in time, playing extremely polarized roles within the system, and performing extreme protective functions, even in highly destructive ways.

But no matter what a part feels, believes, or is trying to do for us (always a positive intent) they are essentially good. Once accessed and once their story is told, all parts and what they’re trying to do ultimately makes sense. Then they can be helped to unload the burdens of the old pain and beliefs they carry and be guided in adopting new, more up to date roles in our system in service of the Larger Self.

Such as in the case example cited above, a part that has initiated spiritual bypass with the hopes of steering us clear of other parts carrying serious pain can, like any part, be helped to unload, take on a more functional, harmonious role with other parts as well. That way, the spiritual pursuit, and spiritual practices can be more cleanly engaged in the service of grounded transpersonal awareness, awake-ness and integrated elevation.

Are YOU seeking to cut through your spiritual roadblocks? Have you recognized a tendency toward spiritual bypassing, or a pattern of avoidance in general on a level that’s thwarting your larger growth goals? Take heart! These are just parts of you trying to protect and help you (albeit not in the most big-picture helpful way). Let’s get to know them, help them unburden, and take on newer roles aligned with Self.

If you’re seeking an integrative, transpersonal, psychospiritually-oriented Nashville Therapist, or a Therapist in Franklin, or, if you’d like to consult with me via Telehealth-Video from virtually anywhere, visit me at: Therapy Outside the Box … or email me at: chris@therapyoutsidethebox.com …or call me directly @ 615.430.2778.

Peace, Love, and Spiritual Integration,

Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP

Franklin, TN

"Shadow Work:" A Modern Take

“Everyone carries a shadow. the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions.”

”Shadow is that hidden, repressed for the most part, inferior and guilt-laden personality whose ultimate ramifications reach back into the realm of our animal ancestors.”

C.G. Jung

Most would agree that the great Carl Jung did much to popularize the western understanding of the “shadow.” Yet the concept itself is ancient. It has timeless eastern/esoteric spiritual and shamanic roots that Jung was well-acquainted with.

Jung’s own ‘confrontation with the unconscious’ engaged with gusto throughout his now much better understood dark night of the soul/descent into madness trials with the release of the Red Book shines the light, so to speak, on the depth of commitment to understanding and integrating his own shadow/unconscious contents.

Fascinating too that even though as we’re only now entering what’s being called the age of embodiment, Jung himself spoke (such as in the above quote) way back when to the necessity of not only making conscious but embodying that which we access.

Shadow defined

The shadow can be described many a way. In essence, and in short, I understand it as the various aspects of our private inner experience—of our psyche—that we have a vested interest in remaining unaware of. Unconscious of. The experiences, emotions, traits, proclivities, tendencies, views and corresponding behaviors we’re most likely to have ‘repressed,’ and keep suppressed, by definition then, are what we’re most prone to project out onto others and the world. Because that energy has to go somewhere.

“What we resist persists” the saying goes.

“A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbor.”

C.g. Jung

Projection can be understood as the outward persistence of what we resist (owning). And projection, it’s said, is hard-wired. As hard-wired as attachment—as that we are social creatures hard-wired for connection.

Both projection and attachment can be seen in a fresh light, through a modern lens, but I’ll come back ‘round to that below.

Back to shadow…

Individuals have shadows. Families have shadows. Organizations and institutions have shadows. Religions and Spiritual Traditions (all of them) have shadows. This is probably why there’s so much truth to the adage “For every ism is an eventual schism.”

Countries have shadows, too. In fact, there’s a whole psychoanalytic subfield of study called Psychohistory founded upon the view that all socio-political dysfunction, all international conflict— wars and such— can be largely reduced to the outward projection of shadow contents. It’s a bit myopic (and projection-laden itself?) but a rich and interesting view.

If you’ll indulging me in reaching back into my traditional ‘inside the box’ psychodynamic training vault here for a minute, one concept that’s always stuck with me from which to consider shadow contents comes from the standpoint of these three essential intrapsychic positions of how we organize our internal experience:

Good Me / Bad Me / Not Me.

(There’s an interesting corollary to other triune concepts like the Drama Triangle: Victim, Rescuer, Persecutor. And the related Transactional Analysis Ego State Theory: Child, Parent, Adult that I’ll maybe attempt to tackle in another post).

Anyway…

Good Me contents would be all the aspects of ourselves that are ego syntonic; free of inner conflict and outwardly applauded, positively reinforced, clearly welcomed as societally acceptable. Early on these would be the traits and behaviors that our families, schoolteachers and other authority figures deemed “good;” desirable, pro-social, and encouraged more of. Good Me contents are easy to lead with, rewarding to own and display.

Bad Me contents would be those traits and behaviors that received negative reinforcement, negative attention, withdrawal of affection or approval, and outward consequences. In the absence of much Good Me reinforcement, many of us overdevelop our Bad Me positions, becoming rebels with or without a cause, and taking more and more anti, rather than pro positions.

Because, especially as children, any attention always beats none. Every time.

When Bad Me is effectively channeled, transmuted, sublimated, great things can be accomplished. Great subversive art can be made. Great social change can be accomplished. But for Bad Me presentations to be truly effective, it must conform to the Dylan Paradox, based on Bod Dylan’s famous assertion that “To live outside the law, you must be honest.”

In most reasonably well adjusted humans, Bad Me contents are usually judiciously engaged, selectively demonstrated, and controlled/controllable.

“The disowned part of self is an energy– an emotion or desire or need that’s been shamed every time it emerged. These energy patterns are repressed but not destroyed. They are alive in our unconscious.”

John Bradshaw

Now the Not Me is where it gets interesting and connects most directly to the shadow theme.

As the name suggests, this is the repository of disowned aspects of Self. The so-called deeply ‘repressed’ contents—the experiences (traumas most especially), traits, thought forms, emotions, attitudes and corresponding behaviors that would be most universally considered unacceptable, unconscionable, even anti-social/sociopathic. In other words, that which is most antithetical to the stability and the Good Me image of the individual.

Think of this as the deepest, darkest part of the shadow-dungeon.

Not Me forever connects in my mind to the treasure trove of spiritual wisdom that largely reduces a healthy mind, and corresponding fulfilling life, to the ability to accept all of ourselves. All of who we are. This means all of what we’re capable of. And we’re all capable of everything and anything that anyone else is. The idea is that ultimately, there are no new thoughts, no new emotions. That all of what we think, feel, perceive and experience, so some extent or another, has all been thought, felt and experienced before. This extends to the idea that given the right (or “wrong”) set of variable/conditions— we are all capable of anything. Right down to the most horrendous acts. All of it.

“I AM THAT” proclaimed Sri Nisargradatta Majaraj as the penultimate liberation and doorway to the Supreme Soul of the Universe.

We are One. We are Everyone and Everything.

Practical Not Me example:

On the more straightforward and common end, take a tendency toward judging others. In this case with a rigidly devout, overly pious, traditionally ‘God-fearing’ individual where such a thing might be considered un-Godly, even sinful.

This neurosis about judgment could easily become Not Me to the individual operating within a such a system of strict conformity and constraint that the mere capability— let alone demonstration— of judgement toward another would be a threat to the likely fragile, inauthentic, at least under-developed self-concept. As well as an affront to the group ethos and self-identity, thereby awakening the possibility of deep shame, abandonment/rejection and/or reprisal.

Given that everyone is capable of and experiences judgmental thoughts at times— an inescapable truth as long as we’re housed in the body— it would leave such an individual no choice but to outright ‘disown’ the very existence of this tendency, banishing it forever into the “shadow.” Ironically/paradoxically, said individual then likely becomes gripped by the counterforce—a compulsive urge to crusade against judgment itself and/or those that 'judge others.

Most of us have seen this time and again, notably in our most conservative public evangelists and political figures. Though doth protest too much, right?

On the opposite end of the spectrum, take adult sexual attraction to children. A psychosexual proclivity toward pedophilia. Outside of some periods of ancient Greece where there was actual cultural support for such attraction and behavior, very few modern adults would outright own and exhibit such deviancy. The aberrant trait itself therefore easily become Not Me (or Bad Me, or even to some degree Good Me in private, shadowy like-minded circles) and thereby it would find expression in all manner of distorted, projected, shadowy, underground ways. Because the energy, the flame of human desire shall not be extinguished in whatever form that desire directs.

“The patience of lust in infinite” wrote Graham Greene.

Of course, the impulse to sexually abuse children (or anyone) is not simply about lust or sex. It’s very much about power, dominance, violence, and in most if not all cases on the deepest level the distorted re-enactment of early trauma, pain, and humiliation stemming from the banishment (Not Me) of such experiences in the psyche and history of those who perpetrate. Talk about shadow.

There may be no better, and sadder, example than the world-wide Human Trafficking / Sex Trafficking epidemic. It’s well understood that this epidemic is driven by multiple individual and systemic factors, only one of which (although a major one) is Not Me pedophilia-related drives. It seems this Not Me expression is often converted into its opposite by some organized religious circles into an outward cloak of caring for and nurturing children, thereby Not Me-masking the darker impulse and true goings on underneath, and the projection of these Not Me contents onto those who question or threaten to expose the “shadow” of the organization or subculture and the actions of individuals involved. Historically, the Catholic Church’s sexual abuse cover up is prime example.

But I digress. If you’d like to know more about this, check out organizations such as End Slavery TN, and Free for Life International. Because believe it or not, it’s right there in your backyard. I guarantee it. Scary but true. And true liberation and freedom are to be found in the light of truth, not the darkness of denial.

shadow in a the light of today

The progressive spiritual community at large— the SBNR (spiritual but not religious) and universalistically/gnostically-minded in particular seem to be historically and only more so taken with the shadow concept, and with “shadow work.” And that’s a great thing. We all need healing and integration. Our world obviously needs healing. Desperately.

While there are always more than one way to skin a cat, and probably very few decidedly “wrong” or overtly harmful ways of accessing and engaging the disowned parts of ourselves, there is, as I frequently hear, much confusion as to the “how” of doing shadow work.

In others words, for many, it’s too shadowy. In my view, part of why is that the ‘shadow’ concept is kind of lagging behind in a river of somewhat outdated conceptualization, and locked in a mono-mind construct that doesn’t mirror current holistic, integrative, mindbodyspirit, trauma-related understandings, informed by modern neuroscience.

To this end, I offer an updated perspective and pathway. And this comes largely from—you might have guessed it— the philosophy of Polypsychism / Multiplicity of Mind, from which the wonderful, trauma-aware, evidenced-based Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS) model was born.

This is of course the view that the mind is naturally mosaic—made up of many “parts” that exist in a psychic constellation surrounding what in IFS is called the Self. Or the Larger Self. The Self is synonymous with the seat of consciousness, the soul if you will; the undamaged spiritual core of who we truly are, marked by such qualities as calmness, curiosity, compassion, courage and creativity.

I view the Self as not only all of the above and more, but as the direct link to Divinity; the Divinity within, if you will. (“As above, so below. As within, so without”).

Distinct from Self, our parts are those split off collections of subpersonalities within the system that had to separate from the Self, and adopt roles and functions to perform to help keep our system safe and protected. What is traditionally thought of as ‘defense mechanisms’ in psychology can be understood through IFS as parts doing what they learned to do.

In IFS, there are three classifications of parts:

Exiles

Mangers (aka protectors)

Firefighters

Exiles are typically thought of as our “lost inner children,” usually the youngest most vulnerable parts carrying the oldest, deepest pain.

Managers are those parts that protect the exiles, keeping them from flooding or overwhelming the Self.

Firefighters are the parts that spring us into extreme action (drinking binge, suicidality, etc) when something—usually an unexpected, frightening external event—occurs that threatens the ability of managers to contain the exiles.

In essence, the more difficult the childhood, the more parts we have, and the more extreme roles some of these parts are performing. The larger goal of IFS, like many forms of healing, is “all parts,” mindbodyspirit integration. Reliving our parts of their burdens, creating harmony where there is division, and helping our parts to adopt new, more updated and functional roles in support of the Larger Self.

shadow part(S)?

“Shadow work is the path of the heart warrior.”
C.G. Jung

From this modern perspective, at root, the ‘shadow’ then could be seen and treated as none other than a collection of parts split off from Self. Through this same lens, the popular concept of Ego could be liberated from the old (Freudian Id-Superego-Ego) construct, with its negative and selfish/self-centered implications, updated and reframed as as a collection of manager/protector parts just doing what know to do to keep us safe.

In other words, part of what we think of as shadow can be seen as exiles carrying the deepest, oldest pain, such as of being shamed, abused, humiliated and of which we are scarcely aware/unconscious. The pain our exiles carry could be considered Bad Me or perhaps in cases Not Me contents. Our manager parts could be seen as fiercely guarding our exiles through behaviors that could be considered Bad Me (defensiveness, judgment, hostile withdrawal, etc), yet they’re also just doing their job the only way they know how. And firefighters that attempt to help by snapping us into the ‘fight-flight’ response could be viewed as enacting impulsive “last resort” distracting, numbing or/or regulating behavior when Bad Me or Not Me-carrying parts threaten to overwhelm the system. Again, just doing their job.

What I love about this reframe and subsequent way of working with “shadow,” is that it normalizes, humanizes and provides a roadmap to helping these parts of us to unburden, heal, and join us (our Larger, Present Day Self) in a harmonious and cooperative effort at aligning with the leadership of our Larger Self, thereby contributing to humanity in pro-social ways.

It also reframes the “dark/shadow-light,” “good-bad,” “us-them” and “conscious/unconscious” polarizations into a more holistic, inclusive, and welcoming reality that we are all inherently multiple, all inherently good, and unified in that all parts of us have positive intent and are trying to do something for us, even if some of those ways are the worst ways imaginable.

In short, it really takes the business of healing and integration out of the shadows.

IFS shows us time and again that all parts are ultimately tired of the roles they’ve been forced into. These roles are adaptations, and not what they’ve ever truly desired to do, or be. Once understood and engaged, and once they feel okay with beginning to trust our Self, they are always amenable to change.

The Multiplicity-based mosaic mind view and the IFS approach offers a modern take on what we call “shadow work” by reframing it as “parts work,” out of the murky depths and into the bright, modern, multiplicitous light of day.

After all, we are both One and Many.

In this sense, it’s not so different or opposed to what the ancients elucidated, as Polypsychism is an ancient shamanic view, or in conflict with what Jung espoused as the larger goal of psychic integration, healing and wholeness.

Full circle.

other paths

Of course, there are sundry other ways to access and integrate all of who we are. Psychedelics— when utilized medicinally, mindfully, and ceremonially, with proper preparation, set and setting, on site guidance, and follow up integration support and exploration—- is one such way that’s clearly on the rise in our current climate of consciousness expansion. Never, ever to be embarked on lightly, one clear risk is skipping over or incomplete preparation work. Among other things, when our protector parts are not checked in with to see how they feel about a medicine journey, they can become overwhelmed by the intensity of the psychedelic experience, especially at high doses. Firefighters fearing exiles may flood the system can be triggered and an otherwise avoidable and unfortunate panic-laden flight/flight response can ensue mid-trip.

This is why IFS-focused sessions are always part of my preparation for my clients embarking on psychedelic journeys, be it ketamine infusion, psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca ceremony or MDMA-assisted journeying.

Esoteric spiritual/meditational/devotional and supplication practices such as transmutational alchemy, trauma-focused bodywork, breathwork, certain forms of yoga (Kriya, Kundalini) and other somatic accompaniments, and even deep contact with nature all hold the promise of helping us make contact with our deeper mind, our long suppressed pain, and the exiled parts of ourselves.

Practicing radical self-honesty can’t hurt. Regularly, fearlessly looking deeply at how we see ourselves, others and the world. Committing to ‘catching ourselves in the act’ in real time of our projections and judgments compassionately, without judging and shaming ourselves, can take us a long way towards integrating the parts we’ve been historically conditioned to disown/project.

ready to discover and integrate your “shadow?”

If you’re seeking a Nashville Therapist or a Therapist in Franklin TN, if you want something different—a truly integrative and Outside the Box approach to mind body spirit healing and integration— visit me at Therapy Outside the Box for more information about me and the services I offer. Or email me at: chris@therapyoutsidethebox.com or call me directly at 615.430.2778.

Some of my services are available virtually anywhere via Telehealth/Secure Video. Discount multi-session packages are also always available.

“There’s an Outside the Box Solution for Every Problem.”

Peace, Love and “Parts Work”

Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP

Franklin, TN

We Are Many

Recently, I was reminded of this profound poem by Pablo Neruda. Along with Walt Whitman’s Song of Myself, 51 (You know, “…Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”) it might very well serve as the poetic underpinnings of the Multiplicity of Mind Theory, from which many robust psychological approaches have emerged.

Among them, is the beautifully intuitive Internal Family Systems Therapy (IFS).

IFS posits that our internal psyche is essentially multiple—that we all have a Larger Self (our unbroken, undamaged essence—the core of our being, soul, or seat of consciousness), and various ‘parts,’ which carry our pain, parts that protect that pain, and still others that spring into firefighter-style action when our internal system is threatened.

The overarching goal of IFS is to create harmony amongst our parts, release them of their old, outdated burdens, encourage them to take on new, update roles kin the system, and generate more access to peaceful, playful, compassionate, calm, curious and creative Self Energy.

Here’s the Neruda poem, for your enjoyment:

We Are Many

Of the many men whom I am, whom we are,
I cannot settle on a single one.
They are lost to me under the cover of clothing
They have departed for another city.

When everything seems to be set
to show me off as a man of intelligence,
the fool I keep concealed on my person
takes over my talk and occupies my mouth.

On other occasions, I am dozing in the midst
of people of some distinction,
and when I summon my courageous self,
a coward completely unknown to me
swaddles my poor skeleton
in a thousand tiny reservations.

When a stately home bursts into flames,
instead of the fireman I summon,
an arsonist bursts on the scene,
and he is I. There is nothing I can do.
What must I do to distinguish myself?
How can I put myself together?

All the books I read
lionize dazzling hero figures,
brimming with self-assurance.
I die with envy of them;
and, in films where bullets fly on the wind,
I am left in envy of the cowboys,
left admiring even the horses.

But when I call upon my DASHING BEING,
out comes the same OLD LAZY SELF,
and so I never know just WHO I AM,
nor how many I am, nor WHO WE WILL BE BEING.
I would like to be able to touch a bell
and call up my real self, the truly me,
because if I really need my proper self,
I must not allow myself to disappear.

While I am writing, I am far away;
and when I come back, I have already left.
I should like to see if the same thing happens
to other people as it does to me,
to see if as many people are as I am,
and if they seem the same way to themselves.
When this problem has been thoroughly explored,
I am going to school myself so well in things
that, when I try to explain my problems,
I shall speak, not of self, but of geography.

Pablo Neruda

(Fun fact: A stranger on the interwebs with a strange bone to pick recently messaged me with an unsolicited scolding for not including the translators name. They themselves didn’t it, interestingly. I then received a good ole’ fashioned shaming for not responding ‘therapeutically” because I called out the unsolicted shaming. Then followed an IFS diagnosis of our interaction framed in or as ackowledgement/apology. I hoped that was the end of it. Alas, here they come again, this time offering the translators identity, presumably because I pointed out the irony of their not knowing it, and my saying I’d be happy to include it in the post. So here it is, according to the troll anyway: Alastair Reid. Disclaimer: May or may not be accurate :).

Interested in getting to know, befriend, and create harmony among the various ‘parts’ of yourself? And a safe, trauma-informed process of helping your parts unburdening themselves?

Internal Family Systems (IFS) is an intuitive, gentle but powerful, evidence based therapy that I’ve been studying and using with my clients since 2006. In true Outside the Box fashion, I offer a customized, Transpersonal approach to IFS.

Looking for an IFS Therapist in Nashville? or an IFS Therapist in Franklin?

Visit me at: Therapy Outside the Box or call me at 615.430.2778 or email me at: chris@therapyoutsidethebox.com.

Some services available virtually the world over via HIPPA-Compliant Telehealth/Video.

Peace, Love, and Self Energy!

Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP

Franklin, TN

Somatic IFS + Higher Guidance = MAGIC

The traditional wisdom in the psychotherapy world is that real change is generally slow going. “Ah ha!” moments, and shifts of all kinds small and large can and do happen. And sometimes wild, even mystically-flavored breakthroughs can come about at any time. But generally, for any human struggle with legs, tangible progress in therapy is considered a slow and steady wins the race-type journey. And a mostly unpredictable one at that, no matter what type or what methods are being applied. And there’s real truth in this. Because, as hungry and ready for change as we might be, we all have parts of us that are wary of it, that fear it; that resist the unknow.

All of us, period. Full stop.

My experience has also shown me time and again that the more urgency to change we have, the more severe the resistance there is lurking in the shadows, ready and waiting to sabotage that change.

Because parts of us have agendas, while for the most part, the Self does not.

Paradox.

IFS Paradigm Shift

This is where the Internal Family Systems (IFS) Therapy model is, in my view, a real gift. Because change can happen much faster in the internal world than the outer. In other words, just talking about our problems, talking about change, or engaging cognitive-only interventions…versus taping and utilizing the body-based knowing, going within and making direct access to the very parts of us that hold the story— the truth of the pain— and working with those parts to safely release those burdens? No contest.

Flowing from the philosophy of Multiplicity of Mind, IFS presupposes that parts with various beliefs, agendas and ideas of their own exist in all of us. IFS normalizes and safely introduces us to our internal parts, or ‘subpersonalities’ in ways we haven’t known before. From a position of acceptance (the prerequisite of all true change), curiosity and compassion, we turn inward with a reverential attitude, welcoming ALL parts of us— from the youngest, most vulnerable carrying the deepest pain, to the potentially most aggressive, punchy, hypervigilant parts hell bent on protecting us, even in the most self destructive of ways.

There are no problems in living that cannot be addressed using the IFS approach. PTSD, childhood emotional traumas, depression, anxiety, codependency, addictions, intimacy blocks, shame, low esteem, abundance barriers, you name it. Because these syndromes are understood as parts of us with a story, either carrying the pain of trauma, managing and protecting those parts, or parts whose function it is to sound the alarms when the most vulnerable parts threaten to flood the Self System.

When IFS is mindfully and intentionally approached with a heightened somatic awareness, it’s even more potent, more alive, and potentially even faster. Faster in that the deeper, more visceral the felt-sense experience of meeting our parts in an embodied way, the sooner we can get into the real meat and potatoes of what the approach is about: the unburdening of our “exiles” (generally our youngest “inner child” parts holding the deepest pain), relieving them of their original “burdens” (a combination of emotional pain and extreme beliefs), helping them to adopt new, updated functions to play in the Self system, increasing harmony amongst our parts, and ultimately freeing up additional “Self Energy.”

To become more and more “Self” led is the true penultimate goal from the IFS perspective. The Self being defined as the true essence of who we are— the larger, undamaged, infinitely whole Self, characterized by what its creator, Dr. Richard Schwartz calls the 8c’s:

Compassion, Calm, Curiosity, Clarity, Confidence, Compassion, Creativity, and Connectedness.

(When’s the last time you felt any of these?)

In short, when we feel and act from any of these states or qualities, we know we are in our Self. We are Self led. Anything else, we can be sure there’s a part (anger, fear, disgust, etc) in the driver seat.

There’s also Dr. Charles Bonner’s nice addition: The 5P’s:

Playfulness, Patience, Presence, Perspective and Persistence.

(When’s the last time you felt any of THESE?)

There’s so much more to IFS, notably the relational component of how it’s conducted, which places great emphasis on the therapists being acutely somatically aware and inhabiting their own Larger Self during the process. Being originally trained as an interpersonal/relational therapist, this is part (no pun intended) of why I took to IFS so swiftly once I became aware of it, back in 2006 or so.

It’s inherently a two-person, relational therapy.

somatic (i.e. soma--the body)

I’ve been familiarizing myself with the many creative offshoots of IFS, notably Susan McConnel’s Somatic Internal Family Systems Therapy: Awareness, Breath, Resonance, Movement and Touch in Practice. This prolific author and practitioner beautifully expounds upon and enriches IFS to include a multi-dimensional embodied, and acutely trauma-aware approach that leaves virtually no stone unturned as far as what’s possible with this model at the root.

The term somatic, hardly new, has become increasingly associated with trauma. Especially as recent neuroscience advances have led to more and more ‘trauma-informed’ therapy models, somatic and trauma have become intertwined, for better or worse. Better because awareness has increased in the pubic consciousness as to the prevalence of trauma and its effects on us individually and collectively. Worse, perhaps, because there emerges a tendency to view nearly every human expression, habit, pattern, or quirk of behavior as a trauma response.

(Spend enough time on Instagram, you’ll see what I mean).

While there are countless ways and methods of addressing and healing our little t or big T traumas in a therapeutic context, always more than one way to skin a cat. And while no one method or approach speaks to all, the theoretical basis of IFS is so inherently simple and intuitive there’s hardly a child that cannot understand its implicit assumptions. I mean, who doesn’t understand, and who hasn’t thought or said:

“There’s a part of me that…”

And we all have a body, right? So with the addition of an intentional, mindful somatic emphasis to an already relational and highly intuitive therapy approach, you might think, how could it get any better?

enter higher guidance

As I’ve revealed and described elsewhere on this site, I ‘came online’ with a direct connection to higher guidance via non local consciousness and my ‘spirit team,’ so to speak, out of a proufound Dark Night of the Soul/Awakening phenomenon a few years back. I’m still integrating and seeing through the ongoing spiritual emergence, near daily sub/superconscious-level downloading, and ostensible ongoing initiation/preparation for some kind of multidimensional channeling that’s flowed from this experience. Or so it seems.

This guidance, that comes through most automatically as a binary YES/NO via involuntary head movement, like an auto-kinesiological muscle testing, along with occasional quiet bursts of intangible insight, mental, quasi-visual impressions, and even more occasional blasts of ‘inner vision,” qualifies I suppose as a kind of claircognizance/clairsentience.

This capacity, not without it’s challenges, is my main weapon (for peaceful purposes) in the Energy Healing method I’ve named Subconscious Heal and Release® —a somatic, energy psychology and solution-focused approach to quickly identify, heal and release the ‘energetic signatures’ of subconsciously-held traumas, limiting beliefs, and trapped emotional energies that keep us out of alignment with our goals and dreams.

However, as part of my general therapy arm— Integrative Counseling— I’ve been experimenting, with great success, with applying this higher guidance to intuitively direct the process of my Internal Family Systems work.

And it’s kinda fucking magical.

To have the privilege of utilizing this access to the ‘Cosmic Reservoir’ (As William James called it) that contains all the information that ever existed/exists, and bring that through in the service of guiding healing, embodiment, unburdening of pain and outdated beliefs, creating harmony amongst parts, and aligning with Higher/Larger Self…what beats that?

Not much, if you ask this therapist.

curious? ready to heal?

If you’re looking for a Somatic Therapy experience, or have wanted to test drive Internal Family Systems Therapy, or just seeking a Nashville Therapist or a Therapist in Franklin and want to learn more about what I offer, visit my website at Therapy Outside the Box or email me at chris@therapyoutsidethebox.com or call me at 615.430.2778 to set up a FREE 20 MIN PHONE CONSULT.

I also have some services available virtually the world over via Telehealth/Video.

Peace, Parts, and Embodiment—

Chris Hancock, LCSW, ACMHP

Franklin, TN