Writing from the Self

How Internal Family Systems helped me be a better writer

I’m never more aware of my parts than when I’m trying to write.

In fact my first exposure to IFS and parts work was from my own therapist, who was listening to me complain about my writing and how much I hated the process of creating something. “It’s hard,” she said, “to have such a harsh inner critic.”

Whoa. Wait. I have something called an inner critic? Isn’t not just … me? And mine is harsh? Mine is harsh! But it’s something I have, not that I am.

I asked her to explain further. She asked me to turn to my inner critic and describe what I saw.

A marionette … heavy makeup…Madame, a puppet from the ventriloquist Waylon Flowers (my maiden name – and the name I write under – is Flowers, not coincidentally). Caustic, droll, dramatic, and certainly critical, Madame and Waylon had occupied a square on the Hollywood Squares tv show for nearly the whole of the 70’s. My therapist guided me to talk to Madame, who told me she knew I could do better. That I wasn’t living up to my own standards, that I was a much better writer than my work revealed. I realized she had positive intentions toward me – and then she told me something else.

When an inner sense of my own failure and incompetence didn't dissuade me from trying to write, she pulled in an old friend to help -- depression. The dark, cold fog that surrounds me and doesn't let me so much as get out of bed in the morning. Instead of standing in resistence to these parts, I managed to relax around the truth I sensed coming from them. I relaxed around this knowledge, somehow -- I had a part that used self-criticism and the dissociative chill around my brain began to thaw. Oh, I knew Madame. I knew her through and through. Wise-cracking, sometimes indecent, most comfortable with a cocktail and lovely gay man by her side. So incisive! So amusing, usually at others' expense! After I turned to her with compassion and radical acceptance -- I mean, she is quite charming -- we “moved” Madame to her happy place, a divan next to the huge plate glass window at Fallingwater overlooking the gorgeous falls. I went home and started writing again.

And here we are, twenty years later, and I’m still discovering new parts related to writing and creative work in general.

A creative blocker, dressed in football uniform, mowing down all the creative ideas as they came, tentatively, to the field. Hypervigilant, powerful, the blocker knows that I’m super sensitive to criticism, having grown up in a family where teasing wasn’t just tolerated, it was the sport of our kings. To stick your neck out there, to risk being noticed, was to risk someone pointing out that you said flatulence when you mean flagellate. Or that your opinions about Richard Nixon were ... ill-informed. My blocker helped me survive that rather brutal (for a sensitive kid) childhood. But he's definitely over-active, trying to stay relevant in a world where really he's no longer needed. I’m an adult and criticism isn’t as crushing as it used to be; also, my parts' criticism makes me feel pretty shitty about myself, which is not Madame or the blocker's intent. I’m free to write about whatever I want, say whatever I want, and I can handle the repercussions. Not that anyone wants criticism, but if I’m writing from Self, criticism can’t really touch me.

So how do we do this? In my creative writing graduate program, I came to realize that there was some kind of writing that felt true and right and almost always was imbued with love. It didn't have to be about love, even use the word anywhere at all. But the author was clearly in love with something. Pieces written with love of something, even just the love of words, of writing, of living this life, glowed somehow. And stood out from the pieces that were written with bitterness, malice, resentment, or hubris. (Please note I'm saying "written with," not "writing about" -- I love stories about bitterness, malice, resentment, and hubris!) If you weren’t getting at the love, wherever that resided, you weren’t getting at the truth.

Now, as an IFS-informed therapist, I see this as writing from the Self, that place of compassionate, connected knowing. I find the act of writing so much easier when I unblend from the manager parts, ask them what they’re afraid of, and promise them that I’m listening. Today I discovered a new system surrounding my blocker part. There were the exiles, of course – the ones who were teased so much, for so little, from as far back as we can remember. And today there was a firefighter, too – the part that says “BURN IT ALL DOWN AND WRITE THE FUCKING TRUTH ABOUT THEM ALL!!!” But that part would not write the truth, not the real one, anyway. It would write its own truth, angry, burning with shame, ferocious. And I may let that happen! But probably I'm not going to send it round for publication.

But the real truth is that I love the people who in childhood made my life difficult. Who caused pain and trauma, unknowingly. I am careful with them, I have healthy boundaries now. But using my creativity against any people, especially people I love, is not, for me, true expression.

Creativity comes from Self – it is one of the 8 C’s of Self-leadership. When we can ask our protector parts to step back, when we take the time to listen to them and work to understand their fears and desires, this is much more easily accomplished. We have to get to know our inner critics and their worst fears, and this, too, is creative work. Our writing is true when it acknowledges and aceepts with love the shadow side of ourselves and of life.