The Rich Roll Podcast - The Multiplicity of the Mind: Dr. Richard Schwartz On A Systems Approach to Healing the Self

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

How do we become more integrated and healed humans? Answering these questions is the life’s work of today’s guest Dr. Richard Schwartz, a psychotherapist who created a very interesting and effective therapeutic modality called Internal Family Systems (or IFS). IFS is premised on the idea that every person has different “parts” within them, each with its own unique characteristics and functions, separate from one’s true or core Self. Furthermore, emotional healing and greater well-being can be experienced by bringing these various parts into harmony with each other—integrating them, if you will—in a process many have found transformative. Dr. Schwartz has been practicing and teaching IFS for decades and has authored several books on the subject, including, You Are The One You’ve Been Waiting For and No Bad Parts. This episode covers many fascinating topics, including the fundamentals of IFS and how it works, Dr. Schwartz’s ‘many parts’ multiplicity of mind model, how to deal with our inner critic, how IFS operates to address addiction, trauma, and depression, and more. This episode culminates in Dr. Schwartz illustrating his process by taking me (albeit a bit reluctantly) through a fairly intense psychological exercise I hope you find informative. Dr. Schwartz’s work is deeply fascinating, and this conversation has stuck with me. My hope is that this exchange inspires you to do the internal work required to live a more integrated and purpose-driven life. Show notes + MORE Watch on Youtube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Seed: seed.com/richroll Whoop: http://www.whoop.com/ Timeline Nutrition: timelinenutrition.com/richroll BetterHelp: BetterHelp.com/richroll Plant Power Meal Planner: https://meals.richroll.com SriMu: http://srimu.com/rrp Peace + Plants, Rich

The Rich Roll Podcast. It's been at it 40 years and we're still finding parts that need to be healed, but it's natural. Ask these questions of that place in your body and wait for the answers to come. place in your body and wait for the answers to come. My guest today is a psychotherapist who created a very interesting and effective therapeutic modality called Internal Family Systems or IFS. It's quite a radical shift in paradigm. You left all that in the past, not realizing you were locking away, exiling your most precious qualities. Dr. Richard Schwartz. Dick Schwartz.

Dick Schwartz. IFS. Yeah, it's incredible. Dick Schwartz's stuff. Maybe some of these parts are bad. Can we not label that as something pernicious that we need to override and overcome? You can, but it hasn't been working that well. He has authored several books on the subject, including You Are the One You've Been Waiting

For, and It's All Coming Up Quick. But first, let's acknowledge the awesome organizations that make this show possible. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety. And it all began with treatment and experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and

the right level of care, especially because unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. A problem I'm now happy and proud to share has been solved by the people at recovery.com who created an online support portal designed to guide, support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you.

I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. We're brought to you today by recovery.com. I've been in recovery for a long time. It's not hyperbolic to say that I owe everything good in my life to sobriety.

And it all began with treatment, an experience that I had that quite literally saved my life. And in the many years since, I've in turn helped many suffering addicts and their loved ones find treatment. And with that, I know all too well just how confusing and how overwhelming and how challenging it can be to find the right place and the right level of care. Especially because, unfortunately, not all treatment resources adhere to ethical practices. It's a real problem. who created an online support portal designed to guide, to support, and empower you to find the ideal level of care tailored to your personal needs. They've partnered with the best global behavioral health providers to cover the full spectrum of behavioral health disorders, including substance use disorders, depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more. depression, anxiety, eating disorders, gambling addictions, and more.

Navigating their site is simple. Search by insurance coverage, location, treatment type, you name it. Plus, you can read reviews from former patients to help you decide. Whether you're a busy exec, a parent of a struggling teen, or battling addiction yourself, I feel you. I empathize with you. I really do. And they have treatment options for you. Life in recovery is wonderful, and recovery.com is your partner in starting that

journey. When you or a loved one need help, go to recovery.com and take the first step towards recovery. To find the best treatment option for you or a loved one, again, go to recovery.com. Okay, this conversation explores Dr. Schwartz's many parts multiplicity of mind model. This is a real inner family that we all live with. It's like your external family if you neglect them. We discuss how IFS operates

to address various conditions, addiction, trauma, depression, and intimacy. This exchange has really stuck with me. I find myself thinking about myself, my parts, and why I do what I do a little bit differently, quite differently, as a matter of fact, as a result of this conversation. And I suspect after listening, you may as well. So without further ado, this is me and Dr. Richard Schwartz. Thank you so much for coming here today. I've been looking forward to this for a very long time. And as I mentioned to you just prior to recording, I followed your work for some time. As I mentioned to you just prior to recording, I followed your work for some time. You've appeared on a number of podcasts that I listen to regularly.

So I'm familiar with your work, but what really locked in an interest in getting you on the show was a lunch that I had with my friend Rangan Chatterjee. I was in London last year and we met up and had a meal and he just couldn't stop talking about IFS and his experience with you. And he's like, you got to listen to the podcast that I did with Richard. And he was raving about how beneficial your work, your methodology

has been in his own life. And so that was really kind of like, you know, stayed with me. And then, you know, when, I don't know who reached out, but when you were making yourself available, I was very glad to, you know, have the experience to talk to you today. So thank you. Well, it's very mutual. I'm a fan and I, like I told you, I love what you're doing for the culture

and just happy to support it. And yeah, I had a real, a good time with him. Yeah. Yeah. He's a good dude. Indeed. Yeah. So why don't we, you know, start off with the obvious question, which is what is internal family systems, IFS, set the stage and, and, and explain your perspective on your particular modality of treating people. Okay. What it is, it began as a form of psychotherapy and it's kind of expanded to being more like a life practice

or a way of understanding human beings that's a bit of a different paradigm. And the basic assumption is none of us are unitary personalities. It's the nature of the mind to have lots of different what I call parts, but other people call other names, ego states, things like that, subpersonalities, that it's natural and that those parts are all valuable. So I wrote a book,

No Bad Parts. I've been doing this 40 years and I've done it with people who've done heinous things. And even those parts, if you listen to their secret history, will reveal how they're just stuck in a place in the past

and they're trying to best protect the person and they carry this energy of their perpetrator and so on. So in that sense, it's quite a radical shift in paradigm. Right, given that the conventional, traditional psychological paradigm is one of mono mind as opposed to this multiplicity of minds that is kind of the pathway into understanding your perspective. Yeah. And when I started talking about multiplicity, the big paradigm was from what's now called the DID literature, which would

be multiple personality disorder originally. And they would acknowledge the existence of these, what they called alters, but it was thought that they were fragments of the broken vase, that you were initially unitary, and then trauma produced all these fragmented personalities that took on a life of their own. that took on a life of their own. And so I've been fighting that paradigm for a long time too because for me, they preexisted the trauma and then they got into extreme roles because of the trauma, sometimes just because they were trying their best to keep you safe when you were young when it happened.

But they exist, they're real. It's not the product of the trauma. but they exist, they're real. It's not the product of the trauma. So in other words, there is this, I guess for lack of a better word, immutable, there's an immutable self and ancillary to that immutable self are all of these parts that are swimming around and they're in relationship with each other.

And they're performing various roles depending upon things that happen to you, et cetera. And your way of kind of approaching this and trying to understand it is premised on a systems approach, like trying to understand it like a technology or like code, right? So walk me through that aspect of it.

And then I kind of want to understand how you even arrived at this idea to begin with. Yeah, so I had a couple of big advantages coming into it. One is I have a PhD in family therapy and I was one of these obnoxious family therapists that thought we'd discovered the Holy Grail and people were mucking around in the inner world, were wasting their time

because we could change all that by just reorganizing these family systems. Sorry to step on you, but like explain family, like what does that mean when you say family systems? Family systems therapy is, so if you're working with an acting out kid, for example, you assume that that kid isn't just

whatever diagnosis he carries, but that in some ways he's serving a function in the family of distracting or he's trying to protect himself from something that's happening in the family. And that our assumption was we could reorganize the family and try to improve whatever relationships were producing his symptoms and that he would stop doing that.

And a lot of times that worked. But as this family therapist, I was determined to prove that. I was in a department of psychiatry and decided to do an outcome study with eating disorders because my hero at the time was a guy named Salvador Mnuchin who had used his structural family therapy with anorexia and claimed a lot of success. So I was going to do it with bulimia and found to my dismay that we could reorganize the families just right. And still a bunch of my kids didn't realize they'd been cured and they kept going. How dare they, right? So this is sort of an external family systems model, right? Organize the people around the person afflicted with the condition you're trying to treat. That's right. And resolve with less than stellar results

is what you're saying. Yeah, and then out of frustration, I began to ask these kids, why are you still doing it? And they started talking this very weird language to me at the time, talking about these different parts of them and how they were doing all this stuff inside. And so, you know, an example would be something happens in my life, it triggers this critic who's brutal and makes me feel horrible.

And that brings up a part that feels young and empty and alone and worthless. And that feeling is so distressing that then this binge comes in to get me away from it. But the binge triggers the critic again, who's calling me a pig on top of the other names. And that goes right to the heart of that empty, worthless, young one. So the binge has to come back.

And I was lucky. I had a couple of clients who were extremely articulate about that whole thing. And at first, because I didn't know from parts, at first I thought, ooh, these kids are sicker than I thought. Maybe they have multiple personality disorder. And then I listened inside myself and, oh my God, I've got them too. And I've got this critic and I can binge on food sometimes and other things. And I have a piece of worthlessness in there. And so then I calmed down and got really curious and just started to ask a lot of questions about how do they relate to each other and how does it work in there?

And, you know, I was lucky that I hadn't studied any psychoanalytic or psychodynamic therapies. So I came with fresh eyes. Right, like a beginner's mind approach. Beginner's mind, I was just going to say that. So I really had to trust what they were saying about the phenomena. And that's partly why this is different, I think, than a lot of things. Both that and the systems frame where rather than just focusing on one part, trying to figure it out, I was really trying to understand the way this whole network operated

as a system. And that's what we go to change. We're trying to change the whole network rather than just one at a time. Right. I think it is a universal condition of being human that we understand we have different voices in our head. And I don't think you have to be afflicted by anything particular or acute to relate to the idea that sometimes you feel worthless, sometimes you feel better than somebody else, sometimes you feel judgmental or hard on yourself

in a way that is disproportionate to whatever's happening or self-esteem, like know, is disproportionate to whatever's happening or, you know, self-esteem, like the list is endless, right? So within that, there's this inner monologue that we all have about the relationship between the person we think we are or the person we wish we were, and how that relates to all of these other,

kind of voices that are criticizing us or urging us to do this or that, which either are in parallel or orthogonal to that, sense of who we think we are or want to be. Exactly. And my contention is these aren't just little voices or thought patterns or emotions. Those are the manifestations of these parts.

But if I were to have you focus on one of them exclusively for a second and get curious about it and just ask, you'd find out that it's a full-range personality that really has a lot to tell you besides the little thought it's giving you. And that it's stuck in an extreme role, often if it's an extreme part, because of something that happened in your childhood maybe. Or, yeah, and that through trial and error over time, we found out how to help all these parts change. And to actually leave their extreme roles and become who they're designed to be. So that's the goal of the model. It's one of the goals.

Was there like a light bulb moment though, in terms of how you started to think about the lattice work or the relationship between all of these? Like how does the systems, cause it just seems so murky and hard to get your hands around, like what is actually going on? Like, how do you overlay this with some sense of organization

or kind of, I don't know, you know, animating kind of unifying principle? You know, it's really interesting because as we talk about it, it seems murky. But if I was to have you focus inside, you would start, oh, there is this one over here and there's this other one over here. And it becomes far less murky. You can actually map it all out and we actually help people do that. And yeah, it's just so rare for people to do it.

People do it through mindfulness and they'll notice their thoughts and emotions. But for me, it's not compassionate to watch suffering beings parade by passively. So this is mindfulness plus. It's like, get mindful and then go to them and help them and hold them and show them that you care about them. And they will start to relax. And most, know, most, it turned out after many years of doing this, that most of these parts are quite young and yet they're still running your life. It's like in family therapy, we had a concept we call parentified child, a child who was forced to be a parent because the parents had abdicated and couldn't handle it, but still tried to do it.

And many of these parts are like that. They're much younger. They're often, like I said, frozen in time and in bad times in your life where they got stuck. They think you're still five years old. They think they still have to protect you the way they did back then.

And they carry something I'm going to call burdens. They carry extreme beliefs and emotions that came into you in that moment and attach to these parts and drive them like a virus, like the coronavirus actually. So a lot of the healing is helping them let go of these extreme beliefs and emotions, getting them out of where they're stuck in the past. of these extreme beliefs and emotions, getting them out of where they're stuck in the past. I wanna dig into that in a very specific way, in particular, the various roles that these parts take on and why they take them on. But you mentioned mindfulness

and this idea of mindfulness plus, like mindfulness is where you're present and in a place of awareness and noticing. So you can be aware and nonjudgmental and in a place of awareness and noticing. So you can be aware and nonjudgmental as these, you know, kind of ideas or voices are kind of passing through your consciousness. And depending upon the modality of mindfulness that you practice,

or at least in certain strains of meditation, there's a different idea at play, which is the more Buddhist notion of no mind, right? Like this idea that, you know, in a non-dualistic sense, like there is no self, there is just consciousness, right? And that is very different from what you're saying, which is there is a self. There is this self that lies within us, like this kernel, I guess, with all these orbiting asteroids and planets that sometimes collide into the self that are the respective parts. So before we get into the parts, is it the case from your perspective that, you know, I said immutable before, like we all have some self within us that is unchanging since birth. And is that the case for every person?

And how did you arrive at that notion? Yeah, so, and just to clarify, what Buddhists call no self, or like you said, no mind, is what I call self. It's semantic. Yeah, now it's gonna get confusing. I'll just try to explain it real quick. So what you find, and this is what I'm about to describe,

is that as you get these parts to separate inside, it releases this person who, you know, when I say, what is that that knows how to heal your parts? You would say, well, that's me. That's not these parts. So I came to call that the self for that reason. But what the Buddhists call self is really these parts. So as they open space, it's who's left, which is the emptiness that's so full.

So it's really the same idea, really. Yeah. Trying to understand that. I think I understand what you're saying. I think we all, like if we spend enough time looking at somebody who behaved badly and that person was willing to open up about why they do what they do,

that you will develop an understanding. Like it will make sense if you understood like their life history and the context in which that behavior developed over time, it would all be very black and white, right? Like it's very much in line with Gabor Mate's work, I think. And I think you've done some stuff with him. Like there seems to be a lot of parallels here

in the sense that it's about really looking at the why behind the symptom. That's right. Like why is this person doing this, tracing it back to something that happened in their childhood, et cetera, to try to make sense of it, rather than let's just malign it or repress it

or pretend it doesn't exist and focus on moving forward and these other behaviors, like strengthening the more positive behaviors. Yeah, which is sort of the culture's approach to these things and a lot of therapies too. So this is quite the opposite. It's again saying they're all good. They're forced into these extreme roles.

But if you just take the time to start to get curious and listen to them, they'll tell you their secret histories of how they got hurt. So it isn't like I have to figure out where it happened in the past. I'm working with you, and you're working with maybe your angry part. Not that you have one, but... It's in there. Okay. And I'm having you focus on it and asking it about itself

and also asking what it's afraid would happen if it didn't get so angry sometimes. And answering that, you would learn that it really is desperately trying to protect you and that it's protecting some other part of you that's quite young and vulnerable. And we would negotiate permission to go to that one. And there's a process by which we would heal that. But all of that I would be doing when you were in what I call self. So to come back to your original question, which is how did I stumble onto that?

So I was learning about these parts, and I'm a family therapist, so as I started taking them more seriously, I'm trying to get my client to relate to them differently. And it took a while for me to get that they aren't what they seemed because at first I thought the critic was, and the field still does, some kind of internalized parental voice. The binge was some kind of out-of-control impulse.

When you think of them that way, it makes sense to fight with a critic or ignore it or to try and control the binge. But if you think of them, as I learned ultimately, that they're just really good parts that got forced into these extreme roles and they're just trying their best to keep you safe. Then you come to them with curiosity first and ultimately compassion and you can wind up honoring them for their service like you might the military these protective parts and they love that and as you do that and change these internal relationships um they'll start to change too

and but to get back to the original story so once i got hip to the fact they aren't what they seem they deserve to be listened to i'm trying to get my client to do that. And so maybe I'm having my client talk to that critic inside and it's going pretty well, but suddenly she's furious with the critic. And it reminded me of family sessions where I'm trying to have two people, maybe a critical mother and a teenage

girl talk to each other about their relationship. It's going okay. Suddenly the girl gets furious with the mother. We were taught to look around the room and see if somebody isn't subtly siding with the girl against the mother. And often maybe the father is. And so we were taught to get that person out of her range of vision and create a better boundary around the two of them and that the girl would settle down and they would have a decent conversation. And I thought maybe the same thing's happening in this inner world. Maybe as my client's trying to get to know this critic, a part of hates the critic has

come in as doing the talking. So I'd say to clients, can you find the one who's so angry with the critic has come in is doing the talking so i'd say to clients can you find the one who's so angry the critic and get it to just relax in there until we're done just ask it to give us a break here and to my amazement clients could do that pretty readily most of them and when they did it i'd say now how do you feel toward the critic? It would be some version of, I'm just curious why it calls me names. Or seconds earlier, they hated it, or maybe they were terrified of it. The simple act of getting these parts to open space seemed to release this other person who not only was just curious, but also was calm and confident and even compassionate sometimes. Like, I'm sorry that it has to do this.

Right, to get that self to disengage with those parts that are impulsing words and behavior that are non-productive to the kind of healing path that you're trying to get them on. Yeah, and the big deal about IFS is that suddenly this other person that I came to call the self would emerge spontaneously. It wasn't like we had to build up the muscle of compassion or anything like that. It was really just opening space and it was uncovered. It just came out.

And then in that state, the dialogue with the critic or any other part would go well. Because now this is 40 years later and thousands of people later using this. And we can pretty safely say that that self is in everybody, can't be damaged, knows how to heal, and is just beneath the surface of these parts such that when they open space, it pops out. and is just beneath the surface of these parts such that when they open space, it pops out. The untarnished self that has always been there since conception or whenever you believe consciousness arises that then gets painted in various colors by dint of the way these parts kind of emerge over time.

But what I like about it is the non-pathologizing kind of approach. Like instead of naming these things with, you know, terms and words that make us feel bad about ourselves or, you know, are in alignment with some kind of diagnosis, it's understanding that all these parts are actually good faith actors. Like they're operating in what they believe

to be the best interest of the self, but they're just out of alignment. Like they're extreme in their role or because of the interplay between different parts creates a non-optimal situation for that self to be expressed in the way that it could be otherwise. Yeah, like most of these parts got their roles

when you were too young to protect yourself. And so they think you're not able to do that. And so they have to do it for you. And so as one of the things we do often is just, I would have you ask that angry one why, how old it thinks you are. And you'll get a single digit most of the time. And then I'll say, just update it a little bit

and see how it reacts. And sometimes they're amazed that you're a grown man who can protect himself now and can take care of them. They don't have to take care of you in that same way. Yeah, they didn't get the newsletter update. No, exactly. They're still operating like you're a five-year-old. And they're still frozen in time back in that scene.

So that just, you know, one of the goals is to help these parts revert to their naturally valuable states. Second goal is for them to trust self as a leader, to learn they don't have to do it all because there's this other person in there that can do it for them. Yeah, I've got a lot of questions about that. But let's get into the various roles that these parts can play. You have a couple categories to help us understand that, exiles, managers, and firefighters. So can you walk me through? Yeah. So again, I'm a systems guy. And as I'm hearing about all this, I'm looking for distinctions and patterns. That's what systems people do. And the big distinction that emerged immediately was between these parts that were very vulnerable and hurt

and then the parts that protected them. So that's really the big distinction. And as I got to know that, the first class, other systems would call inner children. So they're young and sensitive. But when they're not hurt, they're playful and loving and open and creative and wonderful. And we love them. I mean, we don't really know them, but we love having them around.

But they're the most sensitive parts. So they're the ones who get hurt the most by the slings and arrows or by the bad parenting or by the traumas. And once they do, they take on what I call burdens like emotional pain or worthlessness and shame or terror from the event. And now they're not so much fun to be around because they have the power to overwhelm us and pull us back into those memories and make it so we can't function very well. So we kind of naturally try to lock them away

in inner basements or abysses and try our best to stay away from them. And everybody around us tells us to do that because this is a rugged individualist culture. And so you probably got the message many times, just move on, don't look back, you can't change what happened. And so you did, you left all that in the past

thinking you were just moving on from the memories or the emotions, not realizing you were locking away, exiling your most precious qualities just because they got hurt. And so once you get a lot of exiles like that, you feel more delicate. The world seems more dangerous because so many things could trigger them. And again, if they get triggered, it's like flames of emotion overwhelm you and take you out so you have this sort of unconscious fear that drives you to avoid those types of situations so that you're not back in that place yeah what's interesting about that though you use the

word exile like when i was trying to understand what you meant by that um you know for me like trying to recollect some of those incidents in my own life and how I moved forward or failed to move forward in the healthiest way, I almost feel like those parts are not necessarily an exile, but perhaps too present. Like what I've actually exiled are all the memories or experiences where somebody made me feel good

or affirmed me or told me that I was worthy or that I should keep going or gave me encouragement or mentorship. And instead, you kind of lock onto those negative experiences that occur and you create narratives around them that end up driving your behavior well into adulthood. So, have I not just, haven't I exiled like all the good things and overly, you know, emphasized these, you know, sort of, you know, a few incidents and turned them into much bigger deals than they should be? Yeah, there are parts that do that. So what I was calling the critic has a habit of doing that.

For various reasons, and we can get into that, it doesn't want you to feel good about yourself. And so it will lock away any information that counters its narrative, like you said, of who you are and how bad you are, how nobody likes you or how dangerous the world is. But if I were to have you focus on that part, get curious about it, ask what it's afraid would happen if it didn't do that job, there's one of three different answers you commonly get. Either it's trying to keep you small

so that you don't shine and get hurt, or it's trying to motivate you small so that you don't shine and get hurt, or it's trying to motivate you, like you said, to work harder and do better. And given your life, that's probably the one. Or I can't remember the third, but yeah. Well, I think I checked both those boxes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, I think I checked both those boxes. Yeah? Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Well, I mean, we can get into all my voices and all my parts, but certainly there is a voice

that's telling me you're not good enough and the love and acceptance that you seek can only be earned through accomplishments and external validation, et cetera. Of course, like you never quite get there. You chase that forever. And I have my theories about why I feel that way. But that critic is definitely powerful.

And I had the same part. I came out of my family. I'm the oldest of six boys. And my father was a very prominent physician researcher and I was supposed to be that and I had ADD. So I wasn't a good student and it drove him crazy. And three of my brothers are big time physician researcher types. time physician researcher types. And so I came out of that relationship with a lot of burdens of worthlessness because he gave me that message directly or indirectly many times. And with that burden of worthlessness, the part who carries that would be the exile that I tried to get away from all the time. But there's also a critic who is saying, echoing his voice and is trying to, to goad me into achieving to counter the worthlessness

and to constantly get more and more achievements. And IFS wouldn't exist if that wasn't true. Right. I wouldn't. That's what makes it so difficult to overcome, right? Because this is on some level of superpower. It's an unsustainable one and it's not a healthy one. But to ask somebody to let go of that

or disentangle themselves from that is a threat. That probably activates another part, which is saying, if you let go of that, then this whole house of cards is going to cave on top of itself because this is what, you know, this is what you're, you know, this is where, this is the locus of your drive. That's right. Yes. And I totally bought into that until various circumstances made me actually do the work. And I'm here to tell you that it's probably been 20 years, but that critic

has got a totally different job. That exile worthlessness is all unburdened and I'm still cooking. It's not, it didn't. Yeah. And actually- What job does a critic have now? Let me finish. Actually, it's much more effective because I'm a much better leader. Let me finish. Actually, it's much more effective because I'm a much better leader. I'm leading from what we call self now. And so part of what happened was that critic leaks out toward other people. And so when I became the leader of a community, it wasn't helpful.

I was alienating people and polarizing. And so I was lucky I had people come and say, you got to do your work. And so having done that now, the critic- You got to walk your own walk. You got to walk your own walk. And the critic is now, he helps me discern what's good and valuable and like this podcast and what I should stay away from. He's just a discerner.

And the former worthless part, the shame part, like this podcast and what I should stay away from. He's just a discerner. And the former worthless part, the shame part, now is a playful little guy. And so I don't ever anymore, I can say this honestly, it drives my wife crazy because she feels like I should yell at myself a lot more than I do. But I really don't. I don't hear that nagging critical voice anymore. The shame piece I think is huge for a lot of people.

It certainly is with me and it's, you know, on my list of, you list of voices in my head, deep shame for things I've done in the past that I can't change that I'll fixate on. And how that relates to all these other aspects of all these other parts in my personality, that love is conditional and based on accomplishment, excellence is mandatory.

You're never gonna be good enough. And when you fall short, it's more than guilt. It is a feeling of shame, that drives that sense of worthlessness. And in my case, it links up with an imposter syndrome meets perfectionism, control issues. And also like a big part is fear, like dread. Like you should be very afraid,

catastrophe is just around the corner. It's only a matter of time before they find out that you don't know what you're doing and they're going to pull the mic away from you and lock you up for good. Yeah. I appreciate your disclosure about all of that. And what I can say is that you're not alone. There's many people who, and I was that way. And shame is a real motivator because the shame and worthlessness, especially when you're a child and you get that message, is terrifying because we're born as children knowing that if my

parent doesn't like me and thinks I'm worthless, I'm going to die. And many children all over the world die because their parents don't value them. So whenever you have that burden, it's going to die. And many children all over the world die because their parents don't value them. So whenever you have that burden, it's going to be very motivating to get away from. Or it's going to shut you down so you don't even try. So you're right. Shame is a really powerful burden. Yeah. So in addition to the exiles, we also have the managers and the firefighters. And I tend to kind of look at these things through my own experience with addiction and recovery as just

kind of a operating example of how to illustrate this. But it seems to me that, yes, I've, you know, I've exiled these certain parts of myself. And, you know, the firefighters are the kind of extreme parts that flare up when you get really threatened in a very particular way. And in the case of substance abuse, that turns into, you know, kind of like the binges that you were talking about, right? That allow you to disassociate with whatever pain that scenario or

situation was producing generally unconsciously in the person. And then recovery is sort of a process of having the manager take over and get everybody in line so that you can function as a, you know, responsible human being in the world. Well, that is the current state of the art of addiction work is to get the manager to sit on the firefighter as well as the exile. I'm trying to change that because I'm trying to help people in the addictions world actually listen to and value the firefighters.

Even though they ruin their lives they're really just trying to protect and then learn what they protect and heal that and then help those firefighters out of their extreme roles rather than trying to control them all the time. Because either you don't succeed and you just feel worse and worse because you're still binging, you can't do your recovery. Or you do succeed and then you become something of a dry drunk who's got to be careful all the time to not have that get triggered again. gotta be careful all the time to not have that get triggered again. And so the alternative is to go to these firefighting addictive parts. And like I said, learn about what they're protecting and heal that. And then they totally, they change, they take on new roles. So it's a different

paradigm for understanding addiction. Yeah, it is. And it's provocative for me to hear that because I am a product of traditional 12 step and it's benefited me in miraculous ways. So maybe I can push back a little bit and then you can give me your response to that. I think there's a difference between recovery and abstinence and the dry drunk scenario is a, is a, you know, would fall into the, into the abstinence category. But if you're properly working these,

these tools, um, you are, uh, you know, you, you are then moving to a place of peace with yourself that I think transcends that dry drunkness and allows you to function. I totally agree. Yeah, like, so there is like, it's more than a armistice with your parts. Like there is a relationship with them of understanding, I guess, right?

Yeah. I overstated my case because I'm really trying to bring something different. But 12-step is great at certain things. I heard you talk to somebody recently about how it de-shames people, just being able to disclose what you're feeling ashamed of and have a group be very accepting of that and talk about their own so there is a certain amount of healing your exiles

that takes place in that context and then that makes the job of the firefighter that much easier, I mean less intense, it can actually stand down better and it also gets the critic off your back who's, before you did the 12-step, was saying, you're the only one. You're the only

one who can't control it. You're just bad. And now sees that it's so common. And so, yes, there's a lot of benefit to 12-step. I didn't mean to- Right. So is there a logic in your approach in combination with 12-step? Yes. Being efficacious, sort of like mindfulness plus, sort of 12-step plus on top of it, like they can work in parallel? That's right. they can work in parallel.

That's right. I'd say the only difference, at least in the beginning, is to change the view of the addictive part, to really listen to it and honor it for its service, like you might the military, rather than see it as the enemy. Right, to try to understand. This was an aspect of,

or I was gonna say an aspect of yourself, but you see it, this is a part that is being activated to protect you in a certain situation because it felt that you were under threat. And with that, we can be compassionate about why that, you know, that part, you know, flares up in its firefighter role from time to time,

because it really did have your best interest at heart and it didn't realize that it was actually harming you. Yeah, so as you start to do that and you change your relationship with that part, and even before you've healed what drives it, just letting it know you understand it better and you can see how it's really trying to help even though it's not sometimes and that it's stuck in the past.

Just that shift in relationship, the part starts to relax a lot. And then if you get triggered and you have that big impulse right away, you can just remind it, I know you're trying to take care of me right now you can just remind it, I know you're trying to take care of me right now, but just trust me, I don't need that right now. And you'll find a lot more cooperation inside because you have this sort of loving relationship with the part that ordinarily you were really afraid of or angry at. It feels very esoteric. I'm imagining myself in a situation of vulnerability where suddenly there's an overwhelming,

you know, kind of craving or desire. And as they say in, you know, the parlance of 12-step, like the train's already pulled out of the station. Like you're already in a crisis at that point. Like, I don't know that a conversation with that part at that point would Like, I don't know that a conversation with that part at that point would be adequate to mute that incredibly powerful overriding impulse. It wouldn't in the current state of the art.

So, but if you've worked on it and you've built this whole new relationship with it and it knows you now and it knows it doesn't have to protect you in that same way, then you have that C word choice in the moment, much more than you do when it just acts automatically and does its job that way. Yeah. I think one qualitative difference between between your approach and 12-step would be the value in peering into your past and trying to understand it. Like there is this sort of premise in traditional recovery models that it doesn't necessarily matter why you are an alcoholic or became an alcoholic. Like you can cast your gaze

into your past and try to grapple with that. And maybe you come up with an answer, maybe you can cast your gaze into your past and try to grapple with that. And maybe you come up with an answer, maybe you don't, but right here today, this is what you need to worry about. And here are the things that you can do, very practical tools that can keep you on the rails and move you in a better direction, as opposed to your perspective, which is it's all about what happened to you in the past.

And rather than, than, you know, averting your gaze there, being curious about it and really exploring it helps you to have not only a better understanding of the driving forces that led you to behave in this way, but to make peace with them and to be in, in, in relationship with them in an honoring way almost, right? Yeah. So that they don't act out. Yeah. And to what I call unburden these parts

that are stuck in the past. And in contrast to maybe psychoanalysis or other kinds of more cerebral therapies, I wouldn't be having you try to figure out and go through your history from a rational place and try to identify the key trauma in your life. I would have you focus on the pain or the shame or the terror or the sense of rejection or just what you described earlier,

the part of you that feels like, why would anybody want me? And I would have you find it in your body, and I would have you just ask these questions of that place in your body and wait for the answers to come, rather than think of the answer. So it's a very different approach. And people start to see themselves often as a child stuck in a bad situation in the past or a whole series of bad situations. And then I would say, how do you feel toward that boy? And if he were himself, you'd say, I feel sorry for him. I want to help him. A lot of times you'd say, well, he's a wimp. I, you know, I just, he was too weak.

He shouldn't have gotten hurt like that. So I said, can we get that part to give us a break? And so we can actually help him and get him out of where he's stuck. So it's a much more limbic kind of emotional experience than trying to figure it out from this cerebral part. Yeah. How is that different from inner child work? Is it different just because you're recognizing all of these parts and their interplay? One of the differences is I'm seeing this as an inner ecology. And so, for example,

before I would have you go to that boy, I would have you work with the part that doesn't want you to go there. He's afraid you'd be overwhelmed by what he feels. And I would spend time going over those fears and I would be addressing those fears and getting permission before I went. I went because I learned the hard way that if I just had you go to that inner child and you did feel overwhelmed, these protectors will backlash and they'll make you feel terrible and ruin our relationship. So that's how it's an ecologically sensitive model. I'm both working with these protectors beforehand and getting permission and then having them come in to see the change afterwards. So that's all one difference. The other bigger difference is in what I call self. So that, yeah, there's a lot of people that do inner child work.

They're the one, the therapist is doing the talking to the inner child. And the child is forming a relationship with the therapist that can be healing. I'm not trying to say it's not healing, but for me, it's better if yourself is the one to take care of that child and get it out of where it's stuck. So the child comes to trust you as it's the attachment figure or the good parent inside rather than me. Right, right. How does this operate in other contexts beyond addiction? I mean, I know there's a variety of different conditions

in which you've had a lot of success. So maybe we could talk about, like, let's just talk about depression. Like, is that, have you noticed, because you're a systems guy, like, okay, in addiction, here's what it kind of always looks like with everyone between the cacophony of these various parts and the roles they're taking on.

Like, what does it look like with depression? With depression, so again, you've got an exile who's very hurt or very sad and the protector is trying to keep you away from it. In depression, usually there's a part that kind of numbs you out and flattens you out. So you don't have much affect. And it's really, really afraid of that exile. It's afraid of the pain that would overwhelm you.

And so it makes you kind of apathetic and inert a lot of the time. And then you've got the critic who's nailing you for being depressed. And why can't you get over it? Why can't you just get out there? And so it's a version of that. And yeah, we have a lot of good luck with depression. So untangling that knot involves a variety of conversations with these various parts

and getting them to retreat or chill out basically. Yeah, getting them to buy in. I'm what I call a hope merchant. So if I went to that flattening part of you, I would say, Rich, ask what it's afraid would happen if it lets you feel much. And it would say, you'd be overwhelmed

and you'd be pulled into the abyss and I can't let that happen. Okay, if we could heal that so it wasn't such a threat, would you have to keep them so flat? And the part would say, no, but I don't think you can do that. If I thought you could do it,

I wouldn't be doing this because none of them like their jobs. I'd say, could you give me a chance to prove that we can, because we can heal that part. So you don't have to do this job. You can be freed up to do something entirely different. Do you don't have to do this job. You can be freed up to do something entirely different.

Do you then give those parts a new job, like a specific new job? Like, don't you have to direct that energy into something specific? No, I would say, Rich, ask this flattening part what it would like to do instead, if it really didn't have to do that. You'd be amazed at the answer.

It's often the opposite. It wants to get you out and give you a lot of life. Yeah. So I don't have to assign any jobs. We just, the concept is they're all valuable. They got stuck in these roles and we're allowing them to return to their naturally valuable states. The more I learn about this work that you do and the more I'm cognizant of the various parts and how they're impulsing me in various ways, the more I realize you can kind of see it in other people

too, especially people you know well, like when they're behaving in a certain manner, if you know them well enough, you can almost see like, oh, that's that piece, that's not really their self, they're activated right now for this reason or that reason. So I can imagine that there's a lot of benefit in the context of intimacy here, right? This new book that you have,

you're the one you've been waiting for is really kind of all about that. Like in a couples therapy context, having a shared understanding of each other's parts and how they function can be extremely beneficial in creating healthier communication because we're all, anybody who's been in a relationship, like your buttons get pushed or you, you know, you say something and they say something,

and then you're reacting to the various parts as opposed to seeing the self, you know, beneath all the activity that's kind of, you know, hanging over the whole dynamic that goes sideways. that goes sideways. Yeah, exactly. So on a good day, you know, I'm a guy and I triggered my wife and she's Italian. So she's got this big angry part. And it's startling to me because it would remind me of my father

when he would get so angry and it would originally hurt these little parts that were hurt by my father. And so I would come back with, try to match that energy, and we would have these big fights. And it wasn't always, you know, she's probably going to listen to this, so I want to clarify. It wasn't always her that started it. But now both of us can kind of say, okay, I can see she's in that part. And when you're in what I call self, it's like you have x-ray vision.

You can see behind the protector to the exile that's driving the protector. You can actually have compassion in the face of the anger. And if I can stay in self and not take the bait, because self is contagious and protectors are contagious. So if I react from a protective part, it's going to escalate, and we're both going to get more and more extreme. If I can, like I said, see the pain that's driving her, stay in self, and speak in this very different voice, she'll calm down pretty quick. And again, I want to make it clear, it's both ways.

And yeah, so that's one very valuable aspect of IFS in couples. But let me go back to something I was saying earlier, because most of us come into relationships with this exiled part that feels worthless and is looking to our partner or feels terrified and is looking to our partner to take care of that part of us. Right, right, right. And our partner can't do that. And our partner at some point will trigger those same parts in the same way. can't do that. And our partner at some point will trigger those same parts in the same way. And we might even be looking for a partner who resembles the person we got it from because we're still desperate to get dad to tell me I'm valuable rather than, so somebody resembles dad and they love me. Oh, that's so, you know, I just feel wonderful after I feel that from somebody. But then she

yells at me like that and oh, I'm back. So she can't be the one. It's got to be somebody else out there that I got to find. So what I try to do is a U-turn in couples focus so that each partner becomes what I call the primary caretaker or attachment figure for their own parts, which frees up the partner to be the secondary caretaker. Because most all of us have that reversed. We want our partner to take care of our parts or we want some affair to do it

or that it's gotta come from an external person. But if you- Yeah, because we don't want to take responsibility for our own shit. Come on, who wants to do that, right? It's much more fun to get into a relationship with somebody and project onto that person a fantasy or an idealized version of who you think they are, who you would like them to be, and then charge them with the responsibility of healing all think they are, who you would like them to be, and then charge them with the responsibility of healing all of your wounds, right? And when two people are doing that simultaneously,

it's combustible, right? It's a setup, yeah, it's a setup. Yeah, so it becomes tricky. I would imagine when you have couples come in, two people, you have, you know, it's a very complicated knot to untie and to, you know, gain some level of clarity. And then beyond that, once you have that understanding, those buttons are so deeply ingrained, right? Like to not react when it gets pushed in the way that you have historically your entire life, I feel like an intellectual understanding

of the dynamic will only get you part of the way there. Like I think, you know, mindfulness and meditation play a big role in just giving you that extra pause. So you can kind of calculate your environment a little bit better and calibrate your response. But that identification piece that you're talking about, like, oh, that's the critic or that's the this and that's what's operating here. Yeah. On a good day, we get into it. We both say, okay, timeout. We get away from each other.

We both go inside. We find the parts that we're doing the talking. We try to get them to tell us about the parts they're protecting. We go in and let them know we get that that felt bad, but let me handle this. You guys don't have to handle it. So from self, I'm saying that. And I feel this shift. I feel that rush of anger just kind of separate. And I'll say, we'll talk to you later. Let me go back. And so I go back in a very different place, and she does too.

And things that used to take days to get over take out most of the hour. Yeah, yeah, yeah. take out, you know, most of the hour. Yeah, sure. Yeah, yeah. How do you work with somebody who has compartmentalized that piece of themselves so completely such that, you know, the request to bring it into the light or be in conversation with it is equal,

is almost like a death threat, right? Like they're holding on so tightly to this thing that makes them, you know, they think makes them who they are and to relinquish control or to have a different relationship with whatever it is, makes it literally feels like you're going to die, right? Because that is part and parcel

of how they've constructed their identity to keep themselves safe. That's right. And again, you're using pronoun they, but it's just a part. So there is a part that's been running their life and thinks it's them and is very attached to being in charge.

And so the idea that there are other parts is very threatening to it. The idea that it's not who rich is, like you said, it can be terrifying. Like they're going to die if they really even look at that. So there are some clients like that that come in and I'm very gently just connecting with them. I'm not bringing up parts. I'm just helping them trust that it's a safe environment. And then at some point, I might say something like, I noticed that there's a part of you that really has gotten you where you are now, and it's been terribly valuable in many ways,

and I'll bet it's really tired because I bet it's just constantly striving and working. And we love that part. It's so valuable and it's done such a good job. But just check and see if it might want a little bit of a break and might want to check around and see if it's totally alone in there

or if there might be other parts of you or even you who could be helping it. So it's a kind of a sales pitch, really. But to do it in a very gentle, non-judgmental, non-pathologizing way. Loving way. We love this part. Instead of, you know, that thing that you do is hurting everybody around you all the time. Like that doesn't work. And that's a relic of the 12-step movement too, where you're to confront people about how much damage their activity has caused.

And that's a big mistake in general. I mean, sometimes it works, like shakes people out of there. But a lot of times people just get more entrenched in their protectors. Yeah, that's interesting. I mean, there is, you know, a core piece obviously is the inventory, right? Which nobody really tells you what you can and can't write, but you're meant to go on this inward journey to, you know, really, you know, this inward journey to really tabulate your behavior over time.

And I think there's a lot of value in that because it does snap you out of whatever identity mode you're in about who you think you are and sheds light on the reality of how you actually behave. And that allows you to then see how that impacts other people. And then in lockstep with that, you make your amends into the world. So explain to me what's missing in that piece.

Is it the sense that it's like, there's a harshness to it or, you know, what would you? You know, there can be, I think there's 12 step approaches that aren't harsh, that really just do try to do that inventory from a mindful place and not, the shame isn't so involved in it. And even if you do it softly, I mean, a lot of times the addiction is a way to stay away from even looking at all the stuff you've done in your life.

So just pushing somebody to go back and look can be very, very triggering for them and bring forth all kinds of shame. So I don't have an argument with what you just described. It's more when somebody is in denial, the aggressive approach to that denying part, rather than I can see there's a part that doesn't wanna look at any of this. Let's get to know that part and see what it's afraid would happen. And then I would reassure the part

that there's a lot we can handle and I'd be right there to help it with that. Do you know what I'm saying? Yeah, yeah, I understand that. And it's all founded on this idea that there are no bad parts, right? The title of one of the other books, having a compassionate relationship

with all of these parts. But is there an argument to be had that maybe some of these parts are bad? Like, what about the person who has the part in them that makes them, you know, go shoot up a school or, you know, perpetrate a violent crime on another individual. Like, is it your argument that we should have compassion

for that piece and try to understand why it drove the self to act out in that way? Or can we not label that as something pernicious that we need to, you need to override and overcome? You can, but it hasn't been working that well. So I believed that, okay, maybe these critics are good and maybe these binging parts are good, but what about those kinds of people that you just described? And to test that, I consulted to a treatment center for offenders, sex offenders, for a number of years and worked with a lot of those perpetrators. And we would find the perpetrating part.

And they, of course, felt totally ashamed of it. And so we had to work a lot to the point where they could get curious about it and then started asking these same kind of questions. And it would show them scenes in their childhood when they were being perpetrated, not necessarily in the same way. And that this part decided, I've got to protect this kid, looked around the room and said, who has power in this room? It's the person who's hurting me. I'm going to take in that energy to try and protect the kid from that parent and then get stuck with this desire to hurt people,

the desire to hurt little kids even. Get stuck with that burden. And then, you know, the person goes into life and tries to keep it at bay and lock it up and it just gets more extreme. Right, right. That tends not to work, right?

Yeah. So the point of all that is once I got that, that's when I could start saying, okay, maybe there are no bad parts. And I would go to other, you know, I've been in prisons, I've been working with murderers, I've been- Does that work?

Have you noticed whether that works in a case of true sociopathy or somebody who is, you know, completely lacking in empathy altogether? Is it a case of understanding why they lack empathy, getting to know those parts, and getting them to a place where their self can experience empathy again?

Yes, yes, it's a case of- I mean, that's revolutionary in terms of how that contradicts a traditional model. It's very revolutionary. And if you see them as a sociopath, you're gonna have one response. If you say, oh, there's a part that protects them, that doesn't let them feel anything or care anything about anybody, and just tries to get whatever they want, even if it's destructive to other people, and it's a protector.

And let's get to know it and see where it's stuck in the past and help it, which is what I've been doing with a lot of these kinds of people. I know that this modality is, like we said, kind of at odds with traditional methods. So what is the, like, how is this being received in the broader scientific community in your field? Has that changed? I mean, there is, because it's so different and what you're proposing is at odds with so many of the kind of principles.

It's very radical. And I told you this is our 40th anniversary of the beginning of it. And so for probably 30 years, I labored in obscurity and I got attacked by those kinds of people and seen as dangerous. And for whatever reason, the last decade, it's caught fire.

And I don't really know why. I've tried to figure it out. Not as much, like I was in academia, I was in the Department of Psychiatry, and then tried to present there and got attacked and just decided, okay, I'm going to go grassroots. So since then, I've been, the last 30 years, I've just been trying to bring it to therapists. And now it's everywhere. Now, I don't know why. It's being embraced.

Yeah. And is there a different narrative within that more traditional culture that's changing or is there still resistance? No, it's not. No, there's still very wedded to the DSM and seeing all these things as diseases or disorders and still very simplistic.

In other words, diagnose, prescribe without understanding like when you, like what is the emotional experience of diagnosing a patient when they hear that diagnosis and what that does to someone's awareness of like who they are and what they're capable of and what they're to someone's awareness of who they are and what they're capable of and what they're not capable of. Well, some diagnoses people attach to and they feel like,

okay, I've got this condition, that's why I'm doing this stuff. And it's a relief in a sense. And some of that, 12-step does that. You're an addict and all that. But it doesn't really help you change your relationship with the parts that are making you do this. It just kind of helps you with your shame about it, but you still feel like a broken person.

You feel like there's something wrong with you and that it's not, you know, very pessimistic about changing it other than medication or 20 years of talk therapy. And your perspective, there isn't that immutability, obviously. In the diagnostics? Yeah.

These diagnostic categories just represent clusters of protectors, usually. They're pretty good descriptions of common clusters of protectors, but that's all they are. but that's all they are. And so instead we go to the protectors and we start to help them trust they don't have to keep doing this. How does the ego work within all of this? The ego as we sort of conventionally understand it, is there a locus of that in this model

or you think differently around that? Like explain your view on that. Yeah, so what people traditionally call the ego for me is a cluster of little managers. They're the parts that you're most identified with. Some think they are you, like we were saying. And they run your life. And the voices in your head that are trying to figure out when you're in a dilemma which way to go, it's often these two different managers both trying to protect but in opposite ways.

So that's what both psychology and also spirituality see the ego as, as often a pest that gets in the way. And so I'm trying to also bring this compassionate awareness of the ego, because it's the parts of you that jumped into those roles to just manage your life when you were young and they've been doing it ever since and they're tired too. And they get a bad name all the time. So instead of maligning them, again, it's the same thing.

Like go in, understand it. Why is it behaving? Why is this part showing up in this way? What's it afraid would happen? That's one of the big questions for protectors. What's it afraid would happen if it didn't do this job? And in answering that, you're going to hear either about the exiles it protects or about some firefighters polarized with and is afraid it'll take over if it doesn't keep you busy writing books or whatever. Right. No, I get it. And then there's the saboteur, right? So talk a little bit about that. I mean, that's the part that is always undermining you at just the opportune moment.

always undermining you at just the opportune moment. Yeah, if you happen to have that part, we could ask it what it's afraid would happen if it didn't. And generally it's afraid you would succeed. And if you succeeded, you'd be seen. And if you're seen, you'd be attacked or some version of that. So it's keeping you small. It's keeping you small.

Yeah, to keep the risk level like low, the stakes being low. One of the things that's cool about all of this is once somebody has had experience with sessions and sort of been led down the path of having an experience with yourself or one of the other practitioners of IFS, there's a whole sort of set of tools that then can be practiced by the individual itself. Like it becomes a very practical kind of habit-based tool that one can

use on a daily basis. Yeah. I said earlier, it's become a kind of life practice. So when I wake up in the morning, I'll spend a little time in bed just checking in with the parts that I've been working with and seeing how they're doing today and do they need anything and have any of them reverted to their past roles or brought their burdens back. And I'll just make sure they know that I haven't forgotten about them. Because for me, these are real. These are not imaginary. This is a real inner family that we all live with.

And just like your external family, if you neglect them, they're going to get extreme. So there's an ongoing, it doesn't take long usually, maybe 10 minutes, but just staying connected, reminding them, okay, today I'm going to be doing this interview with Rich, and I can handle it. You guys don't have to jump in. You can just let me stay, because it always goes better if you let me stay. And we might even rehearse a little bit. And so, and, and so when I

get here and having lunch, I'm talking to them about, it's okay. It's going to be okay. Just let me stay. And then I stay with those C word qualities. I probably have sensed. I'm pretty calm. I'm pretty confident. I'm pretty clear and compassionate. And there's like eight C words that describe what I'm calling self. I'm creative. I'm connected. I forgot.

I think I just- Calm, I'm connected. I forgot, I think I just- Calm, compassionate, curious, clear, connected, courageous. Is that eight? That was the one I missed. Yeah, I think that's eight. Yeah, so- And every self in its purest state, those eight Cs kind of are prominent qualities. Yeah. There are other qualities like

joy and perspective, but they don't begin with the letter C. I like alliteration. And these eight are the ones that are most relevant to the healing endeavor. So, you know, I can check very quickly how much I'm in my body and self versus there's some part that's taken over. And you get a real palpable sense of the difference. And if I feel like, you know, if you said something that triggered me, I would notice and then I would just say,

just let me stay, just relax a little bit. And now my parts trust that it's better if they do that. It's taken a lot of work, a lot of those morning connectings and a lot of unburdenings, but now they basically trust me most of the time. Yeah, that's interesting. I think there's something really beautiful about the idea

that the unencumbered, unadulterated, uncompromised, pristine self that lives within all of us is characterized by all of these laudable traits, right? Like within that, there seems to be a certain spirituality, right? Like if all human beings have this within them, and that's somewhat of a natural law from your perspective and something that shares and unites all of us

and our path really, or our journey is to either, is to rediscover that within ourselves and express that. Like, I think that's a, you know, there is a, you know, a sort of, you know, non-denominational, you know, spiritual beauty in all of it. Thank you. It's true.

And when I entered all this, I was a scientist, non-spiritual person. I come from a atheistic father. And, but the big challenge for me was as I started to see self in people that had no business having any of those qualities given their histories, I couldn't explain it from traditional psychology, which believes in attachment theory. And attachment theory says for you to have any of those C-word qualities, you needed to have a certain kind of parenting

during a critical period in your childhood. And if you didn't get that, then you got to get it from a therapist or you got to get it from a spouse. It comes from a relationship. It's not inherent in us. And I was finding people that had been abused on a daily

basis, just by getting some parts to open space, the same person would pop out in them that was popping out in all these other less abused clients. So I couldn't reconcile that until people started saying, well, maybe this is like Buddha nature, or maybe this is like Atman, or maybe this is like Christ consciousness. It seems like every spiritual tradition has a word for it, whereas almost no other psychologies do. So then I started to say, okay, I can ground it over there. And it turns out you don't have to meditate 10 years to get to it. It's right beneath the surface.

And of course, once you create a healthy matrix of relationships with all of these parts and the self can emerge and express those eight Cs, not only are you becoming a more fulfilled, self-actualized, healthy human being who can contribute positively to the world, there's a whole downstream, series of implications to that because it ends up,

obviously you're affecting all the people that you're interacting with in a positive way as well. Yeah, and as I'm getting older and trying to figure out what I want as my legacy, I'm moving this to larger and larger systems because I think the world needs, isn't just my system, but this is one of many systems

that can actually make a difference. And so I'm trying to bring more self-leadership to the world, basically, and having some success doing that. Because I do, like I said earlier, self is contagious. So, for example, we're working on now a training for executive coaches so that CEOs will be more self-led and that will be spread throughout the company. And I'm working with a lot of the top social activists

in the country now. So they're not doing their activism from righteous parts, but- Right, martyrdom, like basically an expression of their pain body. That's right. Yeah. And it often is. And as we heal those, those painful parts,

then they can lead from self and they are much more effective. How does one gauge their progress? Like I've found that often it's others who are the more reliable, effective mirrors of one's personal growth because on a day-to-day basis, it's hard to really know that within yourself. How does one know when they're moving in the right direction? Or is there a situation in which you've arrived at a place of wellbeing or is this just layer after layer until you expire?

Well, I've been at it 40 years. I'm still finding parts that need to be healed. But to answer your question, I don't get triggered like I used to by so many things. So some of how you can judge it are the same things triggering me and it's just not the case anymore. So that's one measure.

There seems to be a sort of anthropomorphizing of all of these parts, right? Like, do you have people give them names? Do you have them conjure faces and personalities for them? Like I'm reminded of, I think it was Elizabeth Gilbert who was talking about, like you hear a lot of this in the context of creatives going to war with their like resistance

or writer's block and kind of giving names to that and saying, Elizabeth Gilbert's example is we're going on a road trip, we're gonna drive across America and like, okay, buddy, the part to use your phraseology that is telling her she's worthless and can't write and has nothing to say and blah, blah, blah.

Her way of explaining it was like, you can come on, you're gonna come, you're with me. We're in partnership, right? I'm not pretending you don come on, you're gonna come, like you're with me, like we're in partnership, right? Like I'm not, you know, like pretending you don't exist, like you're here, but you just can't sit in the passenger seat. Like you gotta get in the back seat. And if you start piping up, like,

then I'm gonna put you in the trunk or whatever. Like, so there's a recognition. I hope she didn't say the trunk, but yeah. Yeah, so it's like, we come up with all these creative ways of saying something sort of similar to what you're talking about, right? That isn't repressing or denying or ignoring or compartmentalizing this aspect

that we're very aware is looming in there, but finding a way to communicate with it so it feels heard, but not empowered to exert itself in a way that's gonna be damaging. Yeah, and she's been using IFS for a number of years now. So that's why she talked about it that way. Oh, interesting.

Oh yeah, that's cool. In fact, I'm gonna interview her for a thing I'm doing, I think in a week or two. So it is her, yeah, I think I'm remembering that story right from- Yeah, except the trunk, I don't think she would say. Oh, maybe, yeah, I think I'm remembering that story right from, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Except the trunk, I don't think she would say.

Maybe, yeah, maybe not. But I just do, I do remember that idea of like, I'm not saying you can't come. Right. Like you're coming, just shut up or like. We like you, but you can't drive. We just not gonna let you drive. Right, right, right, right, right.

Or maybe it was like, you can come, but you can't like choose the songs on the radio. Could be that. Something like that, I can't remember. And then of course, Steven Pressfield calls it resistance. And then the flip side is the muse. And that made me think about sort of the converse of that idea, which is adopting an alter ego

to go kind of do the thing, right? Like almost, or you put on your armaments or you're battle ready by, you know, adopting a persona that is kind of an extreme extrapolation of who you are in order to go put yourself in a challenging or difficult situation. Does that mesh up with like your model at all? No, that kind of violates the spirit of it. Interesting. It's really to help those armored parts trust there is this other person in there who can handle,

like three of those eight C words are courage, confidence, and clarity. So- That's all you need, right? I can be totally fierce if necessary. I don't have to rely on an armored part. And if I'm going into a dangerous situation, I can ask my exiles to just go into a kind of waiting room.

They don't have to be here even. And let me handle this situation. So we're really trying to help these protectors trust self and not feel like they've got to. Yeah, interesting. Cause yeah, I'm wondering like, so it was Kobe Bryant who had the Mamba mentality or David Goggins becomes Goggins

and the iron cowboy becomes the iron cow. Like they're sort of trying to, you know, channel a larger than life version of themselves. So what is, you know, what's wrong is the wrong word, but maybe- Well, that's different. That's different. That's kind of what I'm getting at though.

Yeah. So, you know, I played college football at my size. And so there was a part of me that I just hated. My father was full of rage and loved running full speed into guys twice my size. And I would call on that part and it kept me alive. It kept me from being damaged. So in those kinds of situations

where it's fine to call on those parts. Right, like an athlete who's trying to channel a superhuman performance. Yeah. Unless in doing that, you're perpetuating this sense that they don't know you and that they don't trust you and they feel like they have to protect you all the time.

Right, you're the wizard of Oz, right? Who's behind the curtain. Yes. Who's feeble and incontinent compared to the alter ego, right? At my age, that's not funny. So we're helping them become like volunteer fire department rather than firefighters that are on duty. Right, right,

right. But you're able to call, summon them as needed. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I still have that part.

And when I'm now, I sometimes play basketball. It could still, I still like it when it takes over. Sure. Sure. But it doesn't have to protect me all the time. Yeah.

Well, I think it would be cool to, are you, we talked about you maybe, you know, taking me through an exercise or you would love to the time. Yeah. Well, I think it would be cool to, we talked about you maybe taking me through an exercise or you'd be willing to do that? Totally. All right, well, let's try this out. How do we do this?

Do you have something you wanna explore? We've talked about a bunch of different parts of you. Yeah, I mean, I think, I've done so much work in so many different modalities over the years and have grown tremendously, but I still get tripped up by certain things that, you know, I feel I beat myself up then

for not being having grown more. I still, you know, I still am driven, but well, I'll just give you kind of a bunch of stuff and maybe you can extract from that what might be worthy of focusing on. I mean, I still, I've gotten a lot better, but I still externalize this sense that my value is calibrated to my accomplishments

or that love is conditional as opposed to something that I should just be able to receive. You know, that no matter what I do, I'm never gonna be good enough, that, you know, you should be very afraid because it's all gonna fall apart. All these stuff, these things I've already mentioned. I think I have a,

I walk around with a little bit of a self-conscious protective shell around me. And on some level, I'm still the scared kid at the bus stop that used to get beat up a little bit. And I know that, I've heard you do this exercise with other people and often it starts with communicating to that five-year-old version of yourself.

And I was reflecting on that a little bit and realizing like, I don't have any memories. Like I don't remember being five. Like some of my earliest memories are much later than that. Yeah. And you may not have visual memory, but you may have sensei memory. We just don't know until we get in there.

But so far you mentioned four or five different protectors we could start with. So I think you mentioned the critic and then there's the striver that's trying to get achievements so you feel better about yourself. And then there's that and there was one other i don't remember i don't know imposter syndrome perfectionism yeah control okay you know i can i can keep going by the way but like just pick one of those it's a yeah it's like it's that thing of like i've got a lot i feel

like i have a pretty good level of self-awareness around all this stuff. But self-awareness by itself doesn't help them change. Sure, yes, of course, right? And I did just do some pretty intense work around family of origin stuff. And so I feel like I'm better armed around a lot of the childhood trauma issues. And I've been able to give myself a little bit more leeway and compassion than I was able to earlier.

And also view my parents in a much more forgiving and compassionate way. Because I do have like sort of latent anger that flares up that I think is related to that in certain ways that still comes up from time to time. Okay, all we need is a starting point. So among all those protectors, is there one you'd like to start with? I think the one that is probably the most important is the protector that won't let me receive or give love or has that conditional relationship around it.

Okay. That has to do with worthiness, of course. We don't have to figure it out right now. We're just gonna start by focusing on that feeling or however you experience that protective part and find it in your body or around your body. Yeah, it's hard because there's cameras that protective part and find it in your body or around your body? Yeah, it's hard because there's cameras and there's lights and I'm sitting across from you

and I'm caught up in my head around like, this is a public thing. And you know, it's like, there's a lot of layers here that maybe might prevent me from being able to. Totally, it may not work at all. So there's no pressure. And I assume we can edit some of this out. Sure, sure, sure.

If it goes places you don't want it to. It's not so much that. It's more about whether I'll be able to, again, like I have to perform now, right? I gotta be a good performer for you and for the audience. It's more about like that self-consciousness of being watched that is preventing me from. Well, maybe we should start with that one.

Why don't we start with that self-conscious part? All right. So see if you can find it in your body, around your body. I don't know. I also feel my skeptic coming up here too. Maybe we should start with that. Yeah. And I wanna be a good test case.

I wanna tell you where it is, even though I'm not sure where it is. Just any sense. I would say in general, probably around my heart, my sternum. So focus on it there and tell me how you feel toward it. So focus on it there and tell me how you feel toward it. Are we still talking about the self-conscious part or what are we talking about?

I think the worthiness of love part is probably more at the heart of things. So that's where you find him. Yeah. And as you notice him there, how do you feel toward him as you sense him? I mean, there's a sense of, there's competing feelings.

On the one hand, there's sadness that there's this person that feels like they're not worthy unless they're doing things that people approve of and how exhausting that must be. And then there's the other side of it, which is, yeah, but this is what makes you you and look at all the amazing things that you've been able to do as a result of it. This is your best friend and your superpower.

And you should hold on tightly to that. And it's okay because it's okay if you're not able to receive love because you're putting something good into the world and that can be your legacy and that's enough. Okay. So we're gonna ask the part that just said all that to just give us a little space for five minutes

to actually get to know this one in your heart. And we get that it feels really dependent on that to do what you're doing, but let it know that if it lets us help this one, you're not going to stop doing what you're doing. You'll just do it more effectively. I promise. I've heard that before and I don't believe it.

That's fine not to believe it, but just ask if it would give us a chance. And it doesn't have to, if it's too determined that this would be too threatening to your system, but if it's willing to let us go with compassion to this one, you could lead the system more effectively than this part. So, I mean, do I say that out loud?

You don't have to. You can say it inside. Okay. But if it's willing, you'll notice a shift, and you won't have that same need to keep it going. I would say it's holding on pretty tight. Okay. And we could shift to it.

The one who really thinks you have to have this other to get anywhere. So in other words, have me speak for that part? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I might even, I could talk to it directly for a second if you want. Sure. Okay. So you're the part of Rich that really thinks he needs to feel all this bad feeling to be motivated to do his job. And that that's enough. He doesn't need to have love in his life otherwise because he's bringing this to the world.

Is that right? You're that part? A little bit. I would, yeah. I mean, I think. Just let it speak, don't think. Yeah. So you're the part that tells me that.

Rich is, he's got issues. Let me tell you. Yeah. He's weak. He's a little too sensitive. And if I didn't show up, this guy might've not ever moved out of the house. And so I boost him every day, I get him out in the world,

I get him to hustle and like, look what I've been able to manifest as a result of that. And just keeping him shy of that prize that he's reaching for gets him out of bed every day. Okay. So I do believe you deserve a huge amount of credit for all you just described. Are you tired though?

Is it the part now or is it the self? As a part. Stay with the part. The part is indefatigable. Okay. I think the self is tired. Just let the part now or is it the self? As a part. Stay with the part. The part is indefatigable. Okay. I think the self is tired. Just let the part speak though. Is that true that you're not tired?

You just could keep going forever? Or are there times where you get a little tired? It's a drag, but I got a lot of endurance and I get a kick out of the suffering. You get a kick out of Richard's suffering? Yeah. And what's the kick about? Because through that suffering, he learns more about himself.

Okay, so you're afraid if he gave up the suffering, he wouldn't be learning much. The suffering is the engine. Oh, well, that's different. It's not just learning, but he wouldn't be motivated in the way he is without the suffering. If he's not suffering, then he's not working hard enough.

Yeah. Okay. All right. And how old do you think Rich is? Don't think, just let it come. Probably 15. Yeah. Okay. So I get that when he was 15, you really had to do this for him, but would it shock you to learn that he's considerably older than that? He might think he's older than that, but I know that he's still 15. You know that he's still 15.

And he's still as vulnerable as he was then, or what's your sense? Yeah, it's hard to parse the self from the part. Just let the part speak. But the part probably, you know, the part is operating under the assumption that nothing's changed. Right, that he's still in that kind of vulnerability.

Is that right? Yeah. Okay, so I understand why you're still taking this position that was so necessary back then. But if you really trusted that he wasn't so vulnerable now as he was then, would that make a difference in your attitude? It would, but you're gonna have to prove to me

that he's trustworthy. Yeah. So tell me more about why you think he's not trustworthy. Yeah, that's a hard one to answer. Because you don't wanna disclose something or just- No, not because I don't wanna, because I'm trying to identify like if, so the part, so that part-

It doesn't trust you. Doesn't trust me because at 15, I had a lot of vulnerabilities and weaknesses that were exploited. That's right. By others. And I can't see the person, the self that is operating today.

That's right. Yeah. Yeah, he still lives back there. He doesn't know you. He doesn't know who you are. He still thinks you're 15 and as vulnerable as you were and that you couldn't protect him back then. So we can keep going or we can shift.

But if you wanted to keep going, I would ask how you feel toward that 15 year old boy. I feel really, I have deep sadness for that. Like compassion sadness? Yeah, yeah. Could you let him know that and just see how he reacts to your compassion? There's a gratitude, I think, just for being seen.

That's right. Because the feeling of being invisible. Totally. So let him know you get back then, he was feeling very invisible, but that you see him right now. I see him too. Yeah.

And that you care about him. Just see if there's more he wants you to know about what it was like back there for him. You know, I think a deep loneliness and sensitivity a deep loneliness and sensitivity and feelings of being misunderstood and not being heard or recognized, but instead sort of being shouldered with expectations that didn't really meet,

that didn't really honor or recognize like the person. Yeah, yeah. So as you're getting this, how are you feeling toward him? There's a feeling of calm, sort of a catharsis. Yeah. Yeah. So it's really helping him to have you witness him this way. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. And do you see him right now or you just sense him in there? No, I can see him. And how close would you say you are to him in terms of feet away? Oh, just, you know Just right next to him. And how's he reacting to your proximity? I think he's unsure, not necessarily trusting.

This is new for him. So we're not gonna push this. We're just gonna be with him in this caring way until he starts to trust it a little more. In whatever way feels right to you, Rich. To let him know that you, he can trust you. And just take your time. He can trust you and he doesn't have to perform for you.

You're just there with him because you care about him. Yeah, I think that he's comforted by that. He's scared and uncertain and feels alone in that and very private in that. Yeah. and very private in that. Yeah. So ask if he would like you to show up this way for him more than you have.

There's a resistance to that. Yeah. Not from him, from some other part. Just ask. It's more of a, you don't understand. From him? Yeah. So ask him about that. Just ask. It's more of a, you don't understand. From him? Yeah.

So ask him about that. Man, where does that come from? Yeah. You know, it's a lot of, it's all about like legacy burdens really. Great. Which you talk about, yeah. Great, yeah. So what's he saying about like legacy burdens really. Great. Which you talk about. Yeah.

So what's he saying about the legacy burden? I have to be this person. Okay. I'll make it work. Yeah. It'll be fine. Just leave me alone. So he carries all of that.

Yeah. And ask since he got that from other people, it's not his. Does he like having to carry all that? No, but it doesn't feel safe for him to be who he wants to be. In that context, in that time period. Is that right? Yeah. So ask him if you'd like you to take him out of there to a safe place.

Yeah, that's what he wants. Okay. So are you ready to do that or is he ready to place? Yeah, that's what he wants. Okay. So are you ready to do that or is he ready to go? Yeah, yeah. All right, so let's take him, could be to the president, it could be to your house,

it could be a fantasy place, wherever he'd like to go. Specifically? Yeah. Just ask him. I don't know that there's a specific place other than away from where he is. So just take him, just bring him here for now.

All right. And tell me when he's here. Okay. How does he like being here? I think he's confused. Okay. What's he confused about? Well-

Why are there other lights and- It was 1980 a second ago and now there's a lot of stuff that is unrecognizable. Yeah, well that makes sense if you're confused. A lot of this didn't exist in 1980. Right. Okay, but does he trust that he's not out, not in that time anymore?

Yeah. How's that for him? Relief. Yeah, does he trust you care about him? Relief. Yeah. Does he trust you care about him? I think so. Just ask him. Because it was just demonstrated.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Okay, just ask him though. Yeah. So tell him he never has to go back. You're going to be looking after him. And ask with that if he's ready to unload this legacy burden that's made him feel so bad. I think there is a welcoming of that,

but also at that age, the legacy burden or expectations weren't something that, that I was fully conscious of at the time. And when it was operating in my unconscious, but I wouldn't have been able to label it or understand it. So I think there's a, he's not quite understanding the proposition. Let's put it this way.

Ask him to scan his body and see if there's anything he carries that doesn't belong to him. Yeah, there's a lot. Where does he carry all that? In his body or on his body? I think it's almost everything. It's a sense of feeling trapped in the wrong life.

Okay. Yeah. And now that he's here with you his sense of feeling trapped in the wrong life. Okay. Yeah. And now that he's here with you and you're gonna be taking care of him, would he like to unload that? Yes. All right, and ask him what he'd like to give it all up to, light, water, fire, wind, earth, anything else?

I think the water. Okay, so set that else? I think the water. Okay. So set that up, take him to water and tell him to just let all that out of his body, off of his body, let the water take it. There's no need to carry that anymore because he's not living back there anymore. Mm-hmm. And just do that until it's all out of him.

Okay. How's he out of him. Okay. How's he feeling now? Lighter. Yeah. Freer. Yeah. Liberated. Good.

Hopeful. Good. And tell him now if he wants to, he can invite qualities into his body he'd like to have to replace all that stuff. You can just see what comes into him. Yeah, I think an empowering sense of agency and self efficacy and permission really is a big one.

That it's okay for him to be who he is. That's right. So how's he doing now to be who he is. That's right. So how's he doing now? He's doing better. Good. Yeah. So now let's invite all these protectors that we met to come in and see. They don't have to protect him anymore.

There might be other parts, but that he's doing well, particularly the one that led us to him and just see how they react. I think it's a situation of like confusion, like, okay, what are we gonna do now? But also like, all right, like, I guess this is, this is cool. Seems like he's doing all right. Well, the one, what are we going to do now is a really good question. So they can all start thinking about new roles if they want. What would they like to do if they

didn't have to be these, these guys? A source of empowerment. There you go. Yeah, that's right. So thank them for letting us do this. Actually quite a big piece of empowerment. There you go. Yeah. That's right. So thank him for letting us do this. Actually quite a big piece of work. Yeah. And just check and see how it's feeling in there. If there's anything else we need to do before we come back out. No, I feel like the reassigned roles

need to be just providing him with not just support and encouragement, but with the tools that he's going to need to be able to stand on his own two feet and explore his own way. Yeah. Are you willing to do that for him? Mm-hmm. So let him know.

Does that feel complete for now? Yeah, that was pretty good. Come on out and how are you feeling? I feel good. I feel good. No, it was surprisingly meaningful. It was surprisingly meaningful. I think it was a little bit impacted by just, you know, the construct that we're in right now.

Like I probably would have been more emotional if I was sitting in your office and no one was watching. So I had a self-consciousness around that, I think. Yeah, I could tell. And also it just being a newer exercise of trying to really get a handle on like the parts and how they're operating and separating that voice from my voice.

Yeah. Yeah. Given that this was your first shot at it, you're really good at it. Yeah. I mean, we went to an exile that many people takes months to get to. Yeah. Well, we'll see.

I mean, what's the tail look like on this in terms of how many sessions you have to do or how do you have to, like what is the kind of protocol that maintain those breakthroughs? Maintenance simply means what I was saying earlier, like tomorrow morning, wake up, see how this 15 year old's doing, if he's still feeling good.

If not, why not? What happened? Did some other part throw him back? Cause it was threatened to not have the power over him. And so just maintaining it on your own now, it helps to map it out in some form. But take it as real. Right.

This is a real inner system that needs maintenance. Thank you. Thank you. Before we close it all down though, I think it would be cool if there was some kind of, like, is it okay to give the audience some type of practice? I mean, you talked about the thing that you do in the morning, but is there some kind of takeaway

that they could start to wrap their heads around and do themselves? Well, the closest I can think of to that is I did a series of these kinds of things, exercises, meditations for Sounds True. And I forget what it's called, but they should be able to find it. All right, we'll find it

and link it up in the show notes. Yeah, and there are, in the book, No Bad Parts, I think in that book too, there are also exercises. Yeah. Yeah. All right, good.

Any place other than those two places and picking up your books, particularly the latest one that you wanna direct people towards? There's another book that just came out last month called Introduction to Internal Family Systems, oddly enough. That feels like that should have been the first book.

Yeah, well, these are actually second editions of them. And so all that's coming out through Sounds True. And yeah, otherwise, if people go to the website, which you can post, there's a bunch of other stuff. Cool, well, I really appreciate the work that you do. I know that it's been transformational for many people, including people that I'm close to. And I was moved by what you just took me through.

So I appreciate that as well. I was honored that you trusted me enough to do it, honestly. And really happy we could do that bigger piece. All right. Well, thank you very much. You're very welcome. Cheers. You too.

Peace. You too. Peace. Peace out. That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guest, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com, where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change in the Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do

is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review and or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated. And sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful.

And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the meal planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo, with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg, graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis, as well as Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg, graphic and social media assets courtesy of Daniel Solis, as well as Dan Drake. Thank you, Georgia Whaley, for copywriting and website management.

And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants. Namaste. Thank you.