Yeah, that's the big discovery of I F S, that that self exists in. Everybody can't be damaged and is just beneath the surface of these parts, such that when they open space, it pops out spontaneously and it knows how to heal. It knows how to heal in the inner world. It knows how to heal in the outer world. Welcome everybody. My name is Drew Horning and this podcast is called Love's Everyday Radius.
It's brought to you by the Hoffman Institute and its stories and anecdotes and people we interview about their life post process and how it lives in the world. Radiating love. This podcast contains discussion of sensitive topics including self-harm. Please use your discretion. Hey everybody, welcome. To the Hoffman Podcast. Dr. Richard Schwartz is with us today. Welcome Dick. Thank. You Drew. It's an honor to be invited. I am so excited for this conversation.
When Hoffman and Internal family Systems come together, I think some interesting things gets transpired. There's so much overlay and there are a couple key distinctions that it feels like are important to elevate today and I'm looking forward to the conversation. Yeah, you know, I, I'm not totally familiar with the Hoffman process, but I have a number of friends who, uh, have benefited and one close friend who's on the way. She, she's filling out all the paperwork now.
Ah. And the paperwork is legendary and epic in its length. In its depth. Yes. , she would agree. Dick, you started as a systemic family therapist and an academic. You were grounded in the systems thinking and developed internal family systems known as I F Ss in response to all the client's descriptions of parts within themselves. And I'm looking forward to hearing that kind of origin story origin. And you've now founded the I F S Institute.
You've written multiple books of which recently the two that feel really geared to the public are, first there are no bad parts and the second one, you are the one, you are the one you've been waiting for. That's correct. Yeah. It feels like those two books sum up part one and part two of what I F Ss is all about. Does that feel like those, the titles of those represent key components of I F S? Very much. Yeah. I hadn't thought of that, but now that you, you mention it, that's great.
Yeah. Will you tell us your origin story? I know it involves being a family systems therapist, you're in with families, you're, you're learning, you're growing and you're starting to notice some things take us there into the room as you work with families. Sure. I was one of those obnoxious family therapists that thought we'd found the holy grail and that these analysts and people are wasting their time mucking around the inner world.
We could change all the symptoms by just changing the family structures. It looks like you're old enough to have been around during those days. There was a big polarization. So I assiduously avoided studying anything that had to do with intrapsychic work and decided to prove family therapy was the best. So gathered together 30 kids with bulimia and their families and did an outcome study in about 1981.
I think the study was found that it wasn't true, that we could, at least my kids kept, didn't realize they'd been cured. They kept binging and purging. So out of frustration I began asking what was going on that that kept them doing that. And they started talking this language of parts which was, you know, I thought, okay, that's a nice metaphor for their thoughts and emotions, but I didn't have any other kind of conceptual frame for it at the time.
I didn't think of myself that way by any means. But they kept insisting that these parts had a lot of autonomy and had relationships with each other and had a few clients that were extremely articulate about that whole inner phenomena. And so I got intrigued and again, the fact that I hadn't studied other intrapsychic systems came in handy because I really had to listen to and trust what the clients were describing.
Initially I made the mistake that most therapists still make, which is to think that they are what they seem. So the critic is just a kind of internalized parental voice and the binge is an out of control impulse. And so I was trying to get my clients to control the binge and argue with the critic and they were getting worse, but I didn't know what else to do until the first client I was aware of who had a, a really severe, uh, sex abuse history and also cut herself in addition to her bulimia.
And by then I'd heard about the gestalt empty chair technique 'cause I was hearing about four and five and six parts. I'd have all these chairs lined up and they'd be hopping all around the room and . And so one session I decided I wasn't gonna let my client leave until that cutting part had agreed not to do it to her. So we had it in the chair and after a couple hours of me badgering it and, and my client badgering it and finally agreed not to cut her.
And I opened the door to the next session and she's got a big gash on the side of her face. And I just emotionally collapsed. That was the kind of turning point in history, the model, because I shifted out of that coercive we're gonna beat you place to just getting curious out of desperation. And I just said, why do you do this to her? And I said, I can't beat you at this. And in doing that, you're talking actually not to her, but to the part inside of her.
That's right to the part that's in this separate chair. And the part said, you know, I don't really wanna beat you. And so then I got even more curious than why do you do it? And the part proceeded to talk about how when she was being abused at a child, it had to get her out of her body and contain the, the rage that would get her more abuse. And this cutting came in handy then and was needed.
And so I shifted again. Now I'm not just curious, but I have a kind of appreciation for the heroic role it played in her life and I could convey that to the part and it broke into tears 'cause everyone had been fighting with it or hating it. Finally somebody's listening to it. And so I tried that same curious approach with other people's parts and they all liked it, , all these very extreme parts. Finally, somebody's listening to them and would share their secret histories of how they
got their roles in the past. So as I did that over and over, I started to think maybe these things aren't what they seem like. Maybe they're valuable parts that got forced into these roles, which is the way I see it now after all these 40 years. That there are literally no bad parts.
The basics of the model are that it's the natural state of the mind to be multiple, to have parts what I call parts other systems called ego states or sub personalities and that we're born with 'em and then they are here to help us in our life. But trauma and attachment injuries and bad things that happen to you force them out of their naturally valuable states into roles that can be destructive, but often we're necessary at some point in your life they're frozen in those times.
Most much of the time they literally still think that you're five years old drew and they, they need to do this still. And they also carry what we call burdens, which are extreme beliefs and emotions that came into you during the trauma and attach to these parts and then drive the way they operate almost like
a virus. So that's what I, just by staying curious, that's what I began to learn and began to shift from seeing it just as a metaphor to really believing that there's this whole inner system of real inner beings that constitute the mind and then try to get clients to, to get to know their parts rather than try to control them. Yeah. So as you have done this work over 40 years, is that right? That's correct.
Yeah. So when you had that initial sort of rewriting of your understanding as you went through it over these 40 years, have you had any changes of heart or the experience has actually proven the model even more valuable and more sustainable? Well yeah, there are several times where I almost quit. Initially I was hearing both about protectors, like the critic, you know, the parts that I mentioned, the, the binge part.
But I was also hearing about these very, very vulnerable parts of people that have been hurt really badly and were stuck in really terrible scenes. And it felt like, let's get to that as soon as we can 'cause that's what needs to heal. And so I would encourage clients to go there. And then I had a couple clients that had these horrible backlash clearly related to the session experiences af right after the session.
I had one client get into a car accident shortly after the session and just claimed she didn't see the car. And another client just had huge physical headaches and really intense kinds of fevers. And I just thought, Jesus, these systems are so much more delicate than I thought and I'm mucking around kind of blindly. I either have to learn more about how to do this safely or I need to just stop doing it. So I worked with my parts a lot just to get the courage up to,
to get curious. And I had some clients I, I just would ask them, what am I doing wrong here? And the parts that had been doing the backlashing told me that I was violating their rules because they'd spent her lifetime rocking these other parts away and trying to keep them locked up and up here I came in and burst open the doors and have them come pouring out and they were gonna punish her and me for violating that.
So a lot of the, I think what is partly unique about I F s is that it's so systemic in the sense that we don't just think about one part at a at a time, but we think about the whole system. And a lot of that comes from my family therapy background where I brought I imported systems thinking and actually a lot of family therapy technique to these inner worlds. And it all plays out in a very similar way to external families.
Yeah, I think you've mentioned that before, that it's an interactive system and, and these parts are talking to each other, they have dialogue with each other and rather than go right to the core wound, part of what you're saying is we actually have to engage these parts and talk with them and ask them questions. And Dick, I think if there's one word you've used the most here, it would be curious, would you put that at the top of the eight Cs of capital S self?
Yeah. In the sense of if you can access curiosity, which is often a lot easier than compassion or a bunch of the other C words, then as you interview the parts, those other Cs will show up. So curiosity is sort of the first level that gets you to where you want to go.
And you know, I didn't describe self yet, but that's the big discovery with I F S that as I was trying to use family systems technique to change these inner systems, I would try to have people talk to the parts themselves or have parts talk to each other. And I was finding that as they were doing that, like let's say I had you try to talk to your critic and you were initially curious about why it calls you names and then in the middle of talking to it you suddenly were furious with it.
And it reminded me of family sessions where I'd have two people talking to each other, it's going okay. And then a third family member comes in and makes some comments and it all goes south. And I thought maybe the same thing's happening in this inner system. So I began, I would ask you, drew, could you find the one who's so angry at the critic and could you ask it to just relax back for a few minutes so we can just keep getting it to know it and maybe help it not have to be so hard on you.
When I would do that with clients most of the time they'd say, okay, it did. And I'd say, now how do you feel toward the critic? And it would be some version of curiosity, I'm just kind of interested in why it calls me names. Or even suddenly they would have compassion for it where they hated it seconds earlier. And when they were in that state, things would go well. The part would relax and would tell its story and my client could have a lot of appreciation for how it had to protect them.
And so we could start the healing process. When I would ask clients, what part of you was that that so curious and compassionate, they would say, that's not a part like these others. That's me, that's myself. And so I came to call that the self with a capital S and that's, that's held up now. I was astounded because I had studied attachment theory that says for you to have any of those kind of qualities, you had to have had certain kind of parenting during a critical period in your childhood.
I was working with clients that not only didn't have good enough parenting, they'd been tortured on a daily basis. There was no way they got that from a caretaker. And here it was still showing up. If I just got enough parts to open space, this other person would pop out with all these seaward qualities and knew how to
heal, knew how to begin the healing process. I could get out of the way. Yeah, that's the big discovery of I F S, that that self exists in everybody can't be damaged and is just beneath the surface of these parts such that when they open space it pops out spontaneously and it knows how to heal. It knows how to heal in the inner world. It knows how to heal in the outer world.
When you work with patients, when you work with clients and when you've been interviewed, I've listened to a bunch, the rich role, the Aubrey Marcus and even to a certain extent Tammy Simon. What I hear as you ask these uh, hosts questions about themselves, you turn the tables on them and they're so vulnerable to be willing to share and engage with you about the parts inside them. And as you go about that, I see so much curiosity, so much compassion.
It's almost like you are embodying the eight Cs as you help them engage with their parts. Yeah, that's a a great observation because the degree to which I can do that, if I can be in self with most anybody, they sense the safety, they sense the permission and the acceptance and that relaxes their protectors so that their self emerges much more quickly. And then when I get access to a little of their self, then there's a huge amount we can do.
So that was the other big kind of revelation. I, again, I had this allergy to intense intrapsychic stuff where the therapist becomes that good healing object. So I was thrilled to find the self who could do it and I didn't have to get involved much. And then I came to realize no, my presence is really, really important. Not in the same way it is in those kinds of therapies, but I have to be in those eight Cs for people to feel safe enough to do the work.
You know, I have to share that in preparation for this conversation. I did lots of research, listen to you in a lot of podcasts and then sat down on the couch one day by myself and just brought to life and tried to accept, normalize, welcome all these parts inside of me. And it was such a freeing experience. It was slightly meditative, just self-reflection. Another word you use a lot is unburdening the unburdening of self. That's I think part of of the experience I had.
Will you talk a little bit about that? Yeah, as I said earlier, these parts accumulate these extreme beliefs and emotions that we call burdens from intense experiences, particularly when you're young and carry them like a virus. And when they're willing to unburden to release those extreme beliefs and emotions, which I think Hoffman process as a a way to do that, the parts will immediately transform into their naturally valuable states. So the unburdening is in some ways equivalent to healing.
Although to get to an unburdening you usually have to go through several different steps with the part that you're working with. When you talk about the different steps, is that in a one way of understanding that is the various questions you engage it with? Yeah, again, because of the backlash experiences I had, we now almost always start with a protector, not what we call an exile. So not with one of the very, very vulnerable parts.
So I might start with your critic, I would have you notice it in your body and then I would ask how you feel toward it and if you had an attitude toward it, we'd get that to step back until you did say, you know, I'm interested in why it calls me. Name some version of that. So you're curious and you would ask it that question and what's it afraid would happen if it didn't do that? And in answering that, it's revealing usually what's protecting.
So if I didn't make you feel like shit, you might get out there and be seen and and be creamed by the, by the public. So I have to keep you small this way. So generally these critics, that's one of the three or four different common roles, the reasons they're doing what they're doing. Once we get that information, we can give it a lot of appreciation for at least trying to keep you safe that
way. And also this question asking how old it thinks you are, time you get a single digit, it still thinks you're six years old and it needs to keep you small like it did back then. Probably it really did need to do that back then. So we can show it a lot of appreciation for how hard it's worked your whole life to protect you. But update it, I'm not sticks anymore. I can handle more than I could back then and I'm not in the same context
anymore. Sometimes these parts are totally shocked, they they really have no idea. And then as we get permission, then we negotiate permission from that critic to go to what it protects, which are usually the parts that were hurt so badly. Uh, when you tried to shine and got creamed and, and we don't go there until we get permission and then we go and
first you would see yourself as a boy. Often it's not always the case, but that's the most common I would have you try to connect with that boy until he really trusted you. Sometimes that takes a while 'cause they have this, where have you been? You know what, you didn't protect me back then. Why should I trust you? But if you're in self, you can often pretty quickly you're in the parts trust.
And then when that was in place, I would have you ask the boy what he wants you to know about what happened to him and how bad it was in the past. And you likely see some scenes from your childhood. When he felt fully witnessed about how bad it was, I would say, drew, now I want you to go into that scene and be with him in the way he needed somebody. And you would say, okay, I'm there and how are you being with him?
I'm just holding him and helping him trust that he's not alone and ask if there's anything else he wants you to do back there for him. He wants me to tell my father to never do that again. Okay, could you do that for him while he watches? So we do whatever that what's ever needed by the part back there. You know, you're just kind of sitting there telling me what's happening. It's not like we're doing it psycho dramatically or anything,
although sometimes we do that. When he feels complete with that, then I'd say, let's see if he's ready to leave that time and place and come with you to the present or to a fantasy place of his choice. And so you'd bring him maybe right there where you are, let him know he never has to go back and you're gonna take care of him. And, and then just ask if he's now ready to unburden to release the extreme beliefs and emotions that he still carries in his body.
Most parts at that point are ready. They see they don't need him anymore. You could ask him where he carries all that in his body or on his body and he could tell you. And then we have a kind of, uh, he borrowed from shamanism the elements. So ask him if he wants to give it up to light water, fire, wind, earth or anything else. He picks one of those and we have the light shine on him and he sends it all out of his body into the light. You ask how he feels now, almost always.
They say, I feel much lighter and more joyful and wants to play now and wants to be entirely different. Then we'll bring in the protector to see it doesn't need to protect this boy anymore. And now what does it wanna do now that it's freed up and we help it into its new role? And it might have to unburden also. I love the way in which you compare to veterans. You say, thank you for your service, thank you for, for your service in protecting me.
And there's sort of a secondary piece to that is you're no longer needed. In this role. Yeah. In this role. Yeah. 'Cause it's really important they, they're always reluctant to give up the role if they don't know there's a a better alternative. Ah. Some of them do just wanna rest and lay on the beach or something.
But most of them, you know, a lot of times like the critic we've been focused on, you ask what would it like to do now instead, now that it trusts, it doesn't have to do this, a lot of times it wants to be your cheerleader wants to support you and get you out there. It's often the opposite of the role it's been at. So we just find out what it wants to do now and help it into that role. But it's always valuable. That's why I say there are no bad parts.
I can only say that after having done this with rapists and murderers and people that have done heinous things in their lives and we go to those parts and they share their secret histories and, and they're stuck in horrible abuse times and they carry the energy of their perpetrator as we unload all that they transform too. It's a radical idea, this notion of no bad parts.
I mean as I'm thinking about the entryway for the uninitiated i f s person is almost you are walking down the street, you are triggered, something happens, you know, at Hoffman we say never waste a good trigger. And that feels sim akin to there's no bad parts. So if you notice something, get curious and that's a part inside you and engage it and what does it need and how old is it? Yeah, it's very similar that way. There are what we call tor mentors in our life with a hyphen between the tore
and the mentor. So by tormenting you, they're mentoring you about what you need to heal and then what they trigger in you become what we call trailhead. So as you focus on that emotion and you just stay with it, it'll take you to the part from which the emotion is coming and then you can start the process. The irony that a guy who was resistant to the internal world is in a sense mapping out all these various avenues and trails to various parts. It's fantastic .
It is very ironic. There's a lot of ironies I've run into along the way. But yeah, I mean my father was a big scientist. Three of my brothers are, and I feel like I've just been a good scientist. It's all been trial and error. I, I didn't make any of this up, but I've just been open. My father's big line to me was follow the data even if it takes you way outside your paradigm. And that's what I've done.
You know, similar to Kristin Neff and uh, Brene Brown where they bring the scientist mind and way of learning and assimilating of data to the personal, the interpersonal to the psychic experience. It's a great combination. Totally, totally. Yeah. I just wanna go back to this idea of your lack of formal training around some of this stuff and how that helped you over 50 years ago. Bob Hoffman started the process and and sort of downloaded it and he
was really a tailor. He worked with clothes, he, he had no formal training. And I think now that you talk about your own history, that that people have talked about that being an advantage to him because he had no biases. Do you see that? Yeah, I had no choice but to be in that beginner's mind and, and really trust what everybody was telling me about it.
And I think that's been the obstacle for other people to get this or at least to get as much of it because they, they come with all these presumptions that really get in the way of that. There's a word we use a bunch in Hoffman, which is surrender. And it feels like that's part of what you're talking about or surrendering into the unknown, into the dialogue of parts that you're not sure what's gonna happen. Absolutely. And every session then becomes a kind of adventure so that you're never bored
as a therapist. You just, wow, where's this gonna go? And you also don't have to be very clever because you don't have to make the big interpretation. You can just wait 'cause the part's gonna tell you what it is. It's not like you gotta figure it out and give that gift to your client. You're staying curious, you're getting your client to stay curious and it all becomes revealed.
It seems a key distinction that you're making there that it, although it's therapist and facilitators supported, it's not therapist and facilitator dependent and that we have access to these parts to us on our own. Absolutely. You know, I, I've gotten very interested in the whole psychedelics movement. There's this organization, maps, map's been doing the research with M D M A and the guy doing most of that is Michael MIT Hoffer, who's an I F S therapist.
In their research he would find that without any queuing, uh, from the facilitator, at some point people would spontaneously start doing I F Ss on their own. I think the MDM a and other psychedelics kind of put the protectors to sleep releases a lot of self and then it is just something people know how to do. He kept track, 80% started doing I F Ss without any help from the therapist.
So it was very validating that I feel like I just stumbled onto something we all know how to do once our protectors relax. Yeah. Another, another word we use at Hoffman is integration. The integration of the quad entity. And when you describe that, it sounds like that's organically what's happening and a kind of integration.
Yeah, I think that's right. Our four goals of i f s, one of which is to bring harmony to this polarized inner system so the parts get to know each other and know who they really are rather than their images of each other and communicate and, and to have self be the one facilitating all that, like an inner therapist. That's the third goal. The first goal is sort of the no bad parts idea that helping each of these parts be liberated from the extreme roles they've been forced
into. So they can be who they're designed to be. And then the second goal is for them to all start to trust self as a leader. Because a lot of times I had no clue that there was this great leader inside and it takes a while for them to really feel like they don't have to run everything. 'cause most of them have been like in family therapy, we'd call them parentified children. They were too young to run the person's life,
but they still had to do it. And they're in over their heads and they're, they've just been waiting for somebody to come along and say, we got this, we can, you can relax and do something else.
Do you sanction the, I'm not sure if it comes from I f Ss, but the, the map that has the parts there surrounding self at the core, because it feels so similar to what we call the negative love map where these patterns, these rings of patterns are like tourniquets in a way on our soul, our heart, our life force. And the goal is to unburden, undo some of the patterns and then also do the opposite, which is to help self expand, to break out on its own. Yeah.
That all sounds very compatible as long as you are not conveying and and people don't have a negative attitude toward the patterns. So that would be a problem for.
Me. Yeah, this feels like a key distinction that sometimes in our desire to help students separate from patterns to help them understand they are not their patterns, they're blown away that they could be what we call a spiritual self, very similar to your language and that it had usefulness as a child, but it has an expiration date, it has a a shelf life.
Part of what you are saying is that you can actually in engage with the part or the pattern even after it's lived out its usefulness early on in life. Absolutely. And in the process of doing that, you help it transform rather than having to get rid of it or put it on the, on the shelf or something like that. And it's very relieved to be out of its role and to have to be able to do what it was designed to do.
So that sounds like the main distinction and it'd be great if, if you guys could experiment with that experi. Yeah, thank you for the, for the encouragement. I think that um, that's our own growth edge as an institute to do that. I wanna ask a little bit about the myth of mono mind and generally speaking the cultural patterns as we might say, some of the orientation of how we view ourselves.
Yours is such a holistic feminine embracing, one of the words I think of when I think of I F s is like yes, yes and yes and over and over again and the traditional academic community has not looked favorably on I F Ss, have they? No, I I have scars. I was in academia initially, I was at the, in the department of psychiatry at the University of Illinois Chicago. And I just got pilled when I tried to present this in there.
And at some point I I, after about 10 years I had to leave and try to take it grassroots, which is, you know, it's paid off. Although it, as you say, it still hasn't really infected academia that much And it's, you know, it's a tough sell in that world because most academics basically are in their head all the time and they, they think that's them. They think this mo, this one mind is all there is. And if you've got parts then your pathology.
And that comes actually from the whole d I D movement, multiple personality disorders where people clearly had parts, you know what they call alters and they had these horrible backgrounds and so people started to assume the existence of these alters is a sign of pathology because the one mind got blown apart. And that's what I've been fighting my whole career, that people with that diagnosis are no different from any of us in having parts.
What's different is because of the horrible abuse there's got very fragmented and like they're big associative walls between them. But it's the same thing. And we, we use I F S a lot with that population and find just like everybody else, those altars transform once they feel witnessed and unburdened and self is in there too, despite the horrific abuse. So. Yeah, the pathologizing and demonizing of ego, that feels a part of what you're talking about as well.
That's exactly what I'm talking about. And that's rampant in the spiritual world as well, seeing ego as the enemy or or the obstacle. What. Are you up to now? You've gone around the academic world and you've reached out to therapists and you're doing workshops. What's inspiring you lately? My latest sort of guidance is to bring it to larger levels of system and not just have it contained in the psychotherapy world. So I've got a number of projects in that direction.
I'm working a lot with social activists in various kinds and starting executive coaches so we can bring it to CEOs and have them transform their companies and there are small group of people who are bringing it to political levels, I mean to high level political kinds of discourse. And so all that's very exciting to me. I'm, you know, I'm 73, I don't have that many years left, so I never thought I'd bring it this far, but now that I have brought it this far, I just wanna see how far we can go.
Yeah, there's something about expanding to government and political people and activists. What's exciting about that for you and how do you see it uh, transitioning into those areas? Yeah, you know, for me I'm big into fractals. Fractal systems are what they call isomorphic that it's the same form at all these different levels and a person are mapped out what the common roles are when parts are forced into these protective roles or the exiles. So there are managers, firefighters and exiles.
I can look at our country and show you the same issues. You see all those parts playing out in our family, in our government as well, not. Just in the government but in the country as a whole. You know, there are massive numbers of exiles in this country. I mean something like 60% of the people live paycheck to paycheck and there's so many people exile because of racism and so on.
So there's lots of people with lots of raw emotions who see the injustice but don't feel empowered to do anything about it. And then when any system has a lot of exiles, they're gonna have very extreme protectors. And that's what you see in the government. You'll see Donald Trump is the epitome of an extreme protector. They're just out of control.
And then there's all the polarizations of people against that and that gets kind of locked into the place where not much can happen and there's no self to be found anywhere. And so what I'm trying to do is bring more self leadership to these kinds of systems, but those eight Cs and I've got some allies who can help with that, who have access to those levels. So I have a question about shame. I have done so much work around shame and, and I teach about shame at every process.
And so I'm trying to see and understand it for myself and for students is shame an exile part? The shame is usually a at least two part but three part phenomena. So there is an exile who carries the sense of being bad and and worthless. But then there's a critic who says that that's what you are. Usually when you have shame to that degree, you have to have some kind of firefighter activity to get away from it.
And so you'll have some kind of addiction or some kind of dissociation or rage or something. And then that becomes circular because once the firefighter takes over, the critic kicks in to attack you for being out of control. And that goes right to the heart of that exile. And there's the data that I have to be a critic 'cause look how you just behaved. But you just did. Yeah, you're you're an asshole. Yeah. Boy I relate to that little that's a, a vicious cycle right there.
That's right. So that's the vicious cycle that most people, particularly people with heavy firefighter activities are caught in. But, and shame is the actually one of the most motivating of the burdens because as kids we know if we're not valued, if we're worthless, we're not gonna survive.
And so there's this sort of inborn need to get rid of the shame to have somebody who told you you were worthless, change their mind or to find some kind of activity or career that proves that you're not worthless or to just distract yourself from it and get away from it. You can't stay in that level of shame very long. Most people can't. So part of what you're saying there, Dick, is that many people have built a life based on their reactions to the shame that's there.
Exactly. Right. That is totally right. And myself included, I f Ss wouldn't exist had it not been for my father shaming me as a, as a kid. As the oldest of six boys. Yeah, you did your homework. The oldest of six boys, he was this prominent physician researcher. I was supposed to be that I had a d d which I think is probably related to related my position in the family. Is a d d A firefighter in that case. Uhhuh. , yeah. It's kind of dissociative firefighter.
So I wasn't a good student. I was also spaced out a lot and kinda lazy. And so he would tear into me that clearly made part of me feel worthless. You know, after I graduated college I still wasn't a good student. I just kind of cast about as a hippie for a while. But once I found family therapy and then psychotherapy, I said okay, maybe I can do something with this. And that desire to be, to prove him wrong really drove me and kept me going in the face
of all the attacks I had and everything. But then, you know, I became a leader of a community and that shame and the parts of me that were trying to protect me, I, you know, I had, I was kind of narcissistic and, and also um, reactive in an angry way at times and, and didn't really care what people thought about me, which is how I survived all that. All of that made me not such a good leader. And so I was lucky to have people that confronted me and told me, you've gotta work on this. And I have.
And so the degree to which I seem humble now is, is really the product of a lot of hard work. In some of your conversations you've talked a little bit about couples work and I f Ss and I'm thinking about those people that you were so lucky to have in your life who confronted you and spoke to you. Did they talk to the parts or how do you feel and what's your sense of as parts come up in relationship, what should the other person do and how do we use parts in relationships?
Yeah. Well I've learned from my marriage the folly in saying you're in a part from, from a part of mine. We call that pattern policing at Hoffman. And we say that's a no-no. That's a no-no. Yeah, so much better. And when I'm working with couples, I'll have them do what we call a u-turn in their focus. So generally their protectors are focused on changing the other person. And I'll say p I wanna pause that. I want each of you to focus inside,
notice what's happening. Notice the trailheads that are coming up. Sometimes I'll work with one while the other watches, which is very powerful. But other times I'll just say, ask the parts who are trying to do the talking to trust you to handle this and to just relax back so you can speak for them rather than from them. For them rather than from them. That's a key distinction. Very important distinction. 'cause typically we speak from our protectors, right?
How could you do that to me instead if you can say what you just did triggered this part in me that made me feel really bad and, and this other part wants to yell at you about it, but I would really like it if you could not do that. It's a totally different message and the language itself really helps just to know it's not, it's sort of like you with you guys with the patterns. This is a pattern. It's not who you are, it's a part, it's not who you are. Yeah. We will put in the show notes.
Lots of good stuff for listeners to check out, including the eight Cs. You know, I was, I was thinking about this, one of the things I wish innocence begin with a C 'cause there's something about self and spiritual self that has innocence as a quality, don't you think?
Very much? Yeah, there's, you know, there's lots of words that I didn't include that characterize self, not just 'cause they don't begin with the letter C, but also because those eight Cs seem to be the most relevant to the healing process. But certainly innocence is one of those as is joy and perspective and there's lots of them. Yeah. Yeah. I know you've done a lot of talking about this in your career lately. What's it like to talk about it here and reflect in your
place there in Chicago? You. Know, um, as you've alluded it's kind of exploded the last decade or so and it's. Crazy. I do have to say this, like every training you offer is sold out and waitlisted. Yeah. We have 20,000 people on a wait list beyond my wildest dreams actually. Congratulations. What do you think is happening there? Why is it resonating so much?
You know, I've tried to figure that out. Some of it is that I'm a, I'm a better messenger than I was and that's related to the stuff we were talking about earlier and some of it is there's some kind of culturally cultural openness and and need for something like this. So, but yeah, I can't really pinpoint anything in particular. Yeah, I imagine the work still energizes you at 73.
I feel so blessed. I'm so lucky 'cause I still love it. You know, I love doing interviews with people like you and people who I can tell have done their homework and really ask great questions. Yeah. Every day I count my blessings so I'll keep doing it till I die probably. And I imagine keep learning as you go 'cause it sounds like you're continuing to push the envelope and the boundaries of how I F Ss can help and relate to these so many different areas.
That's right. And you know, I'm also blessed to have so many people who are into it now who can take it places I never could and understand it in ways that I can't quite grasp too. So. You've been very generous with the model. Is that my just reading into it or do you feel that way that it is important that people take it on some level into areas that you can't or don't have the time for? Yeah, I really encourage that. The only time we get controlling is if people wanna become i f s therapists.
You wanna maintain some quality control so that there are a number of organizations or people trying to run trainings that just are not the kind of quality that people need to do this. So it's really been, uh, hard for me because my nature is to just encourage everybody to do it, to try to set limits on that kind of thing. Well I am grateful for the time you've set aside for this conversation set aside. I feel totally inspired.
Thank you Drew. I've really enjoyed it. Clearly you're in a lot of self. Yeah. When different modalities can have some sort of overlap of Venn diagram, it's really exciting. 'cause then people don't have to feel like they have to choose that they can take some parts of each. Yeah. And from my understanding, Hoffman is a big thing too. It's it's really grown a lot too. It has. And we, we have a big wait list as well. Not quite as long as yours, but that's.
Great. Thank you Dick. You're very welcome, drew, as I say, I really enjoyed it. Thank you for listening to our podcast. My name is Liza in Grassi. I'm the c e o and President of Hoffman Institute Foundation. And. I'm Rasing Rossi Hoffman, teacher and founder of the Hoffman Institute Foundation. Our mission is to provide people greater access to the wisdom and power of love. In themselves, in each other, and in the world. To find out more, please go to hoffman institute.org.