Meet and Greet: Exiles
Young, exiled parts hold the most pain.
Your sweetest, most vulnerable parts often get the most hurt. These parts are often very young, and take on messages about the world or about themselves:
I am not enough. I am unlovable. The world is a dangerous place. People cannot be trusted.
They internalize the shame of these beliefs, and hold painful, intense emotions:
Fear. Sadness. Shame.
Emotions that are so painful to experience that your system exiles them instead, and your protectors organize around keeping them in exile. Managers work hard to keep them suppressed, and when they push through, firefighters put them back in their place.
The trouble is, the energy of these young parts does not dissipate, but stays buried inside of you, longing for attention and care. They are begging to be witnessed, to be met with compassion, for someone to understand the pain that they carry. They are desperate to receive the gentle, loving presence of an adult who truly sees them, and can hold their pain. Often they have learned that the only way to get your attention is to completely flood your system.
When you work with an IFS therapist in Rochester, NH, exiles are the key to healing.
When we can turn towards the pain with love instead of avoiding, soothing, or distracting from it, magic happens. It’s like if a child was crying, and in response the older siblings locked her in the closet. She needs you to open the door, to understand why she is hurting, and give her comfort. She might tell you what happened to her, and how painful it was, or she might show you. Often it’s as if these parts get frozen in the past, in a specific time and place; other times an exile might hold pain from multiple moments in your life. This is not about reliving your trauma, but about truly witnessing the exiled part: entering the scene (or scenes) with the exiled part, establishing a compassionate connection, and allowing the part to express everything it needs to feel fully known and understood by you.
Then, you have an opportunity for a “do-over,” to give the exiled part the care it needed but didn’t receive at the time, or to do something differently in that time and space. Now, sometimes people get hung up on this (when we talk about the theory; in practice, parts seem to intuitively know what to do once we’re there). While it’s true that we can’t “change the past” or undo what happened to you, these new experiences in your internal world have surprising power, and it actually rewires your brain.
Once that feels complete, the young part is free to move out from that time and place. They can go anywhere, real or imagined; they might choose to go to the beach, or horseback riding, or be tucked into your heart. Once they are there, we have them check their body for anything they have been carrying from that time and place. Often the extreme feelings or beliefs manifest as physical burdens in the internal world: a heavy rock on their shoulders, sticky black tar in their belly, a rope coiled around them. We invite the part to release the burdens in any way they choose, which could be burning them in a fire, throwing them in the ocean, sending them into space, or anything else the part imagines.
Once they have done this, we ask them to invite in any qualities that had been covered over by the burden. You see, often when our systems lock up these precious young parts, they also lock up your playfulness, curiosity, and sense of wonder (and other, beautiful and valuable qualities that these parts were not allowed to express). This is an opportunity to invite those qualities back in, and be fully embodied by the young part. Often after doing this, the part simply wants to play.
At this point we’ll usually invite in the protective parts that were connected to the exile, to witness the healing and transformation. Protectors will sometimes spontaneously unburden, and want to throw their own stuff into the fire, along with the exile. Other times protectors may need some help adjusting to a new role (or may be protecting more than one exile). Always the protectors can relax, knowing that the exile is no longer stuck and in pain.
People often express feeling physically lighter after unburdening an exile. They may feel more in touch with qualities that have been covered over for years. Managers and firefighters that have worked round the clock to both protect the exile from being triggered and protect your system from their pain no longer have to work so hard, and your whole system may feel more at ease. These sweet, little parts that have held so much pain can unlock untold joy.
Ready to meet your exiles? Schedule a consult today with an IFS therapist in Rochester, NH.
