When protection and expansion come together
If our inner world were a house, some parts might be in the kitchen clearing the dishes or raiding the cupboards, while others are keeping watch through the window. Some may be locked away, banished to a room, or fast asleep. Some parts might be out in the world and rarely home at all.
There can be something painful about the idea of reparenting, because it begins with acknowledging what wasn't there back then and, equally, what might not be here now, in that inner world. One has to come home, look around and look at the state of things. Why isn't the toaster working? Why does nobody ever sit down at the table? Where is that barking coming from? How hungry are we? Is anybody home?
No Adult in the Room
Extreme adaptations — or extreme protectors in the language of IFS — come about in response to the absence of an outer resource. This is usually in childhood, when we do not yet have the capacity to resource ourselves. Parts are often described as organising themselves around particular burdens and beliefs.
The protectors protect. They pick up the brush or empty the dishwasher because Mum's out. They discipline the younger ones so Dad doesn't have to. They keep the house immaculate because mess once meant trouble. They stand at the window, waiting for someone to come home. In a sense, these protectors become the parents inside — watching for danger, keeping things under control, pushing towards success, taking care of everything, or preventing closeness where closeness once meant being hurt.
"It's easier to put on slippers than to carpet the whole world." — Al Franken
There's nothing wrong with adapting to our environment; in fact it's essential for life. In extreme instances it keeps us alive. What makes it troublesome is when those adaptations that save us then stop us from thriving in the now.
Reparenting isn't about getting rid of protectors. It is about getting to know them, understanding their roles, the impact of these roles on the system as a whole, and allowing for more space for Self, where these parts can realise their full potential outside of the roles they have been forced to play working alone. Gradually, protectors can begin to discover that they are no longer alone in caring for the system, that there are other ways to operate, and that vulnerable parts need not remain hidden. There is an adult in the room now — and that adult is you.
The Magic Kitchen
In You Are the One You've Been Waiting For, IFS founder Richard Schwartz uses the image of a magic kitchen — an inner place where parts can begin to receive the care and nourishment they have been looking elsewhere for from the inside, as they reconnect with Self and with one another. When parts that have been waiting for a parent begin to experience care from within, they may no longer need to search so urgently to fill those empty kitchen cupboards.
Schwartz demonstrates the significance of that kitchen and why it matters:
"...imagine that the food in this story is really love, and the children are the different parts of you. ...when you love and accept your parts unconditionally — simply because they are in you — they won't be attracted by the false promises of certain other people...your parts won't be so dependent, demanding, protective, or easily hurt that they create constant dramas or make you tolerate abuse...they will be secure in the knowledge that if they are hurt ... you are there for them ..." — pp. 51–52
They stop searching outside for what is missing inside. And vulnerable exiles may be able to move from lonely, loveless places in that house into nurturing, central positions, restoring balance and life to that magic kitchen. Some of the shame around those unmet needs can soften. Protectors may not have to work so hard.
And the way a person meets the world can begin to change too. There may be a little less need to scan the faces of other people for signs of danger or rejection; less need to disappear when something feels uncertain; perhaps more freedom to reach towards something wanted, knowing that disappointment doesn't mean being left alone with it.
The greatest discovery is not that the world is a safe place, but that one can feel safer inside.
This can make all the difference to our lives. This is something that is in our power to change.
The Real Is What Works
When we begin our lives, we learn how to relate and flourish within the experiences and relationships available to us. We adapt. Some of those adaptations help us enormously; others may eventually begin to constrain the life we are trying to live.
Jung understood the first half of life as being concerned, at least in part, with adapting to the demands of the outer world, while later development asks us to turn towards the inner world too. Perhaps reparenting is part of this movement: becoming increasingly conscious of the ways we learned to survive, while discovering that we now have more choice about how we want to live.
This doesn't mean that our protective adaptations are wrong. An inner protector may quite reasonably be concerned with keeping us safe, while a more resourced inner adult can begin to ask another question too:
"Does this path, this choice, make me larger or smaller?" — Hollis, J. (2005) Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life: How to Finally, Really Grow Up
Sometimes the safer choice will be the right one. Sometimes growth will ask us to tolerate a little more uncertainty. The task is perhaps not to choose safety over expansion, or expansion over safety, but to become increasingly able to hold both, and in dialogue.
Coming to Terms With What Can't Be Changed
Sometimes there is also a fantasy to relinquish: that one day the parent will return, that the past will change, or that something we needed then might somehow still be given to us in the way we originally needed it. This is the fantasy of our secret, hidden vulnerable parts. In the work we are with them and discovering what was needed back then.
To acknowledge what wasn't there can mean facing an experience and grieving the impact that it had on our lives. Perhaps those parts are afraid of what that might look like. When we unburden such things safely — present with ourselves and another — needs can begin to be met in new ways, and little ones can move from pain to freedom.
Perhaps the house itself begins to change. Doors don't need to be locked. There can be food in the cupboards. Someone notices when somebody is frightened. Mistakes don't mean punishment. The younger ones can come downstairs and make a den in the living room.
Something new can be created when we are able to face what wasn't there, recognise how we adapted around its absence, and discover what might be possible now.
Growing Up
As we grow, life continues to present us with new dilemmas. The journey is never-ending and always beginning; what changes is our capacity to hold greater complexity, to feel more resourced, and to meet the problems life brings without needing to have all the answers.
Our old adaptations will still call to us. We will not always get it right. Perhaps that is part of growing up too.
Eventually, younger parts may be able to do what children can do when they have a secure-enough home. They can leave it and explore. They can be braver and stand out in the world, make mistakes, change tack and create something new. Jung wrote:
"If a plant is to unfold its specific nature to the full, it must first be able to grow in the soil in which it is planted." — Jung, C. G. (1971) Psychological Types. Collected Works of C. G. Jung, Vol. 6. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, para. 761
Perhaps something similar is true of us. The purpose of discovering a safer home inside is not simply to remain there, but to have somewhere secure enough from which to grow. And parts are free to change or leave. Not because they have been abandoned again, but because they know where home is.
It's always going to be there. And life is for living.
