Take care of your unloved parts

Take care of your unloved parts and open yourself up to true intimacy

Think of a failed relationship that you’ve seen or been part of. Then ask yourself: What went wrong?

You’re probably thinking of the usual problems. A failure to communicate. Lack of empathy. General dissatisfaction and disagreement. Maybe you went to therapy, or read some relationship books, but no matter what you tried, you couldn’t make it work.

Western culture tells us that if we can just communicate effectively, or accommodate the needs of our partner, then we can have a healthy, happy relationship. And if that communication or accommodation isn’t there? Well, you’re not compatible. They’re not the one.

But what if this concept of love and intimacy is founded on a faulty premise? What if the salvation of a failing relationship comes not from the communication between you and your partner, but from within each of you?

Introducing Internal Family Systems therapy, or IFS – a popular and fast-growing approach to psychotherapy. Based on the idea that we each contain extreme or wounded thoughts or feelings – called “parts” – connected by a core “Self,” IFS teaches that if we listen to and nurture these parts, we can find the peace and compassion necessary to live a happy life.

IFS can help you find and address the conditions inside you that are preventing you from maintaining a meaningful, intimate connection. You’ll learn to stop trying to fix your partner, or needing them to fix you, by taking care of yourself and the parts of you that are lacking or dominating.

So what does this look like? Well, let's dive in.

Intimacy problems start when we exile our most vulnerable parts

Let’s start with a metaphor. Imagine that you have a magical kitchen. This kitchen can provide you with any type of food, in any quantity, whenever you want. You inherited it from your parents, so you never wanted for food growing up, and neither do your children today.

One day, a man knocks on your door and offers to give your children all the ice cream and pizza they want, if you will take care of his emotional needs. Of course you say no thank you – your children are happy and full, and you have no need for his junk food.

Now imagine that you do not have that magic kitchen. You are poor; your children are constantly complaining of hunger. You even lock some of the smaller children in the basement so you don’t have to hear them crying – that’s how your parents taught you to handle your problems.

Knock knock. It’s that pizza and ice cream man, looking for someone to fulfill his emotional needs. Suddenly those needy children are fed, and the crying stops for the first time you can remember. Even though the man is demanding, and he grows increasingly stingy with his low-quality food, you can’t bring yourself to kick him out – you can’t let those children starve again.

To conclude this odd little metaphor, the food here is love, and the children are your different parts – the extreme emotions and thoughts we hold inside ourselves. These could be any insecurities or vulnerabilities – a need for attention, or shame in expressing emotion, for example.

We learn – through how we’re treated in childhood, or from expectations placed on us by society – to exile these parts to the basement of our psyches. But they are always there, needing to be fed.

If you have a magic kitchen, then you can provide these parts with the love they need. But if you’re like the second person in the metaphor, then you will take any outside source that nourishes these crying exiles.

This causes us to choose or stay with the wrong person, or become addicted to things that harm us.

The parts themselves are not the problem. Intimacy troubles start because we exile these parts, and deny them the love they need. Once you learn to love and accept these vulnerabilities for the part of you that they are, they can actually be a good thing. For what is intimacy if not the sharing and acceptance of vulnerability?

Let’s see what happens when exiles take control, and how you can start learning to accept them.

The importance of the Self

Author and journalist Elizabeth talks about the power that her exiles had over her when she was rejected by her boyfriend – the feelings of panic and loneliness she would experience lying next to him at night. How she would feel pathetic, both to herself and him. She referred to herself as a “pathetic mess, unrecognizable even to her own eyes.”

When exiles are in charge, it’s normal for you to hate the neediness and desperation that you know you are expressing, which in turn, push your partner away more. In her case, her boyfriend probably had his own needy exiles, which caused him to distance himself even further as she grew needier.

When identifying our exiles, we need to know where they come from. Often, they are rooted in the past – when our vulnerabilities were met with shame or judgment by a parent or carer. This is based in attachment theory – the idea that children form a model for how the world works from those who care for them, and this model influences both the direction their lives take and their eventual worldviews.

Elizabeth’s exile that was hurt by her boyfriend’s rejection may have been formed by a parent who left, for example. And her boyfriend’s detachment might have come from the societal pressure put on many boys from their childhoods to hide their emotions.

Because these parts have been exiled for so long, they are unloved, sensitive, and raw. This makes them very easy to hurt, and when that happens it often creates a cycle or chain reaction between partners, with each person becoming more sensitive, desperate, or wounded.

The solution comes from the Self – the true self, which is at the center of these parts. This is a source of love inside everyone that can be used to examine the exiles for what they are: our separate wounded parts.

When you feel hurt by your partner, your first step should be to use this Self to look inside. Find the exiled part that has been hurt, and ask it what it is trying to tell you about your pain. Is there a small child who was ignored at the dinner table? Maybe a loving remark was once met with disapproval?

But be warned. As these parts are so sensitive, it is likely that you have formed other parts to protect them. Let’s have a look at these protectors, and how they work.

How we protect ourselves

What happens when things start going wrong in a relationship? When our partner, who we thought was going to heal the wounded parts of us, ends up hurting them? Depending on the nature of the exiled parts being hurt, there are three things we can do. Let’s call these projects that we start working on.

One project is to try to change parts of our partners. When we realize that they are not going to fix or complete our damaged parts, we panic and try to make them fit into that role. This is obviously quite damaging to relationships, as it makes our partners feel worthless or not good enough.

The second project our hurt exiles make us undertake is to change ourselves. This is particularly common if the wounded exile is one of abandonment. We panic at the thought of the other person leaving, so we try to turn ourselves into exactly what the other person wants. This is not a reasonable or healthy solution.

The final option is to shut down entirely and distance ourselves emotionally from our partners. This could look like distraction or numbing through drugs or alcohol, or fantasizing about leaving or having an affair. This is a common project for men, whose exiled parts often involve a difficulty expressing emotion.

What’s happening when we undertake one of these three projects is that we are actually creating new exiles that function to protect the ones that we carried from our past. Eventually, these protectors come to dominate any conflict in the relationship, through the so-called Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: contempt, criticism, defensiveness, or stonewalling.

Be on the lookout for these toxic behaviors, in yourself and in your partner. These are your protectors revealing themselves, and if unaddressed, they can doom the relationship.

But don’t give up yet. Let’s how to shift your focus to inside yourself, and start speaking for your exiles.

Speak for your exiles, not from them

There’s an ancient story by the Chinese philosopher Zhuangzi. Imagine a man crossing a river when another boat collides with his own. Despite his annoyance, if the man sees that the boat is empty, he will not be bothered, and will calmly continue on his way. If, however, he sees a man in the colliding boat, he will shout at him to watch out. If the other man does not hear him, he will shout louder and grow angrier.

The message of this parable is that if you can learn to empty your boat as you cross the river of life, no one will oppose you or harm you. Because no one gets angry at an empty boat.

This is your goal when dealing with your exiled parts. When you respond to your partner with anger, or say something extreme or unfair, that is not the Self speaking – it is a wounded and exiled part of you, lashing out. If you learn to speak for that part, instead of from that part, then you become an empty vessel. You can collide with others without them becoming defensive or angry.

Imagine saying “I hate that you did that,” compared to “A part of me hates that you did that.” The center of the conflict goes from being something innate and unavoidable to something isolated and examinable. This doesn’t mean you dismiss or ignore what the part wants – instead, the part trusts that you will speak for it, so it can become less sensitive and volatile.

There are some steps you and your partner can take whenever you find yourselves getting into a fight. First, take a breath and pause for a moment. Look inside yourself and try to find the part of you that has been triggered, or what extreme thought or emotion has been activated.

Identifying the exiled part can be tricky. Often you’ll find the protector – the part protecting the exile. You need to dig deeper and follow the emotion all the way back to its source. Maybe you will find that scared child who was ignored, or the need for love that was met with anger.

Speak to that part. Ask it to relax, and trust that you see it and will speak for it. Now let your partner know what you found, what the angry, scared part of you wants to say, and why.

Finally, you need to listen openly to your partner. It’s important that they also understand the process, lest they respond with their own exiled parts. If one or both of you are having trouble with these steps, a therapist might be necessary to guide you.

Now let’s see how to deal with one of the most common sources of exiles.

Love courageously and you will never be scared of abandonment

Try this thought experiment. Imagine your partner comes up to you and says that they don’t want to be with you any more. What parts of you do you notice become immediately active? Did you panic? Was a part of you perhaps relieved?

Without judgment, isolate and listen to these parts to try to discover any abandonment anxiety you may have.

Fear of abandonment is an extremely common problem among people whose exiled parts are those of weakness or worthlessness. Once a person comes along who nurtures and feeds those hungry parts of us, the thought of going back can be terrifying.

There are all sorts of unhealthy responses to this. To protect themselves, some people might exile their own anxiety, convincing themselves they don’t care, or forcing indifference or detachment – if you don’t care, then no one can hurt you. Others might try to undermine the qualities in their partner that could lead them to someone else – if he’s less confident, then he won’t leave.

If you want to deal with abandonment anxiety in a healthy and productive way, you need to learn to trust in your own Self-leadership. 

If you can learn to lead with your Self and care for the parts of you that are worried about abandonment, then you can start actively loving and caring for your partner and allow them to grow. You trust yourself and your partner, and they feel that and respond with more trust and love in return.

As the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “The condition which high friendship demands is the ability to do without it.”

This describes a kind of “courageous love” – where your love comes from a comfort in being separate, rather than a need to be attached. Think of it like the love for a child. We love our children so fully because we do not expect our children to take care of our parts the same way that we are told our partner should.

You’ll know this courageous love when you see it. You’ll find it easy to speak for your parts. You’ll also be open and receptive to your partner’s feedback. When you’re both speaking to each other from your core selves, touching these vulnerable parts doesn’t become a source of stress or panic.

Rather than going to the usual escape routes – anger, detachment, or substance abuse, for example – you work together with your partner to repair the relationship. You’re able to drop all of your defenses, and be totally open.

Listening to your parts is the first step to finding this courageous love – and, ultimately, true intimacy.

Over the course of our lives and relationships, we learn to hide away and protect the most sensitive and vulnerable parts of ourselves. These exiled parts are starved for love, so they lead us to make bad relationship choices – choosing or staying with a person who is bad for us, or sabotaging our own intimacy.

But at the center of these parts is the Self – a source of love that you can use to listen to and care for your exiled parts. If you can learn to do that, then you can approach relationship conflicts with a healthy and productive mindset, and learn to love courageously, without fear of being abandoned, because you are comfortable with who you are.

You are the one you need, so learn to love yourself. Every last part.